The Future War: Enemies and Machines
by bryan0711
Summary: Colonel Derek Baum, a team of terminators, and a squad of special forces Navy SEALs are sent to Europe to stop Skynet from uncovering an ancient secret which could give it the power to finally finish humanity. Spin-off of "By Courage and Blood"
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is a spin-off from By Courage and Blood and explains some plot points. But one can read this and enjoy without reading BCaB. This story is going to be part of a "future war" series (though I'll probably change the name) following the three characters Alex, Jo, and Carter.

And I give credit to Damar at Spacebattles . com in the Skynet: The First Decade thread about Skynet working for the US (as one of the characters says about half way down). That'll be explained more in later stories.

* * *

=========Gdansk, Poland (April 2023)==========

The ruined remains of the city were dark, black. There were no lights. There were never any lights at night anymore. No matter how far one was from them. No one knew when or where they would emerge; but if they saw light, they would come. They were like ghosts, ghouls, or the demons a mother warns her children about if they do not go to bed.

They are a force of darkness which cares for no living being. They walk the Earth at all hours and appear in force randomly. They can see their prey in any condition.

They are the grinning demons with their blood crimson eyes and their metal skulls; grinning skeletons of death.

No place was safe from _them_. The machines.

Extraordinary methods were required to slip by them, because just moving invited their deadly attention.

Silently and without warning the waters around one of the few intact piers in the port city of Gdansk began to tremble. The calm waters of the Baltic began to part as the man made machine slowly rose out of the water. The rectangular island mast was followed slowly by a cylindrical half-tube, the rest hidden below the murky waters.

Blackened water, filled with ash and debris, beaded and dripped slowly off of the metallic surfaces of the machine of war. Once built for man to fight man, the symbol of war was now a strange and perverted symbol of hope and peace. Peace if the machine enemy could ever be defeated.

The gray-black ash water slowly dripped down the surface of the war machine, back into the polluted and ruined waters of the Baltic.

Thirty minutes prior to the submarine's arrival a small military convoy had quietly arrived at the docks. Once Poland's principal seaport, the city was a ruined wasteland, hit by a fifty-kiloton, _American_ nuclear missile. And now, an _American_ submarine sat vulnerable upon the surface of the waters of Poland.

Numbering slightly over a dozen, M35 cargo trucks, guarded by KTO Rosomaks and a French LeClerc MBT began dispersing their human cargo quietly. Fifty soldiers, a mashed unit of half a dozen NATO nations assembled on the docks, rushing towards the American submarine.

The soldiers knew what to do without being told; they'd done this many times in the past. A mishmash of equipment and soldiers, from France, Poland, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, and Denmark took their positions along the docks quietly. Quickly and efficiently they set up overlapping arcs of fire, deployed rocket crews, and propped their squad machineguns up, all aimed cautiously at the American submarine.

Skynet, early in the war, once had control of human warships, before their feared warships deployed; the monstrous Krakens, the agile and swift Hydras, and the powerful Scyllas all ploughed the dangerous waters of the world, waiting and hunting for human targets to annihilate.

As the collection of foreign soldiers assembled the submarine continued to lift itself to its proper height, its mast barely coming under the massive tarps the soldiers had hung weeks ago between two adjacent docks to hide the machine of war from the ever vigilant enemy satellites and drones.

The soldiers gathered, and their commanders assembled in front of a bombed out warehouse, ready to direct and command their soldiers should the submarine prove to be a Skynet Trojan Horse. Skynet had had too many victories in the past twelve years. They would not have another.

* * *

A man, emerald green eyes, a chin of stubble and a face with the soldier's 'Thousand Yard Stare' and too many scars, the kind only earned in battle, slowly unlocked the hatch leading to the deck of the American war machine. He grunted at the unnatural angle his arm was forced to conform to for this task.

The submarine was in need of maintenance. It was a luxury the Resistance did not have.

"You should not be the first one to exit, Colonel Baum," the man under the Colonel stated in a typical deadpan voice the Colonel had long ago learned to accept and grudgingly even respect. But as a soldier who had fought two wars against the machines, old habits died hard. He looked down at the man, the soldier. A soldier he was, but a man he was not. Colonel Derek Baum was always reminded of the enemy he fought when he looked at the one below him.

In this moment the observation which had been made was unappreciated. Baum knew he should not be the first out. But he was the commanding officer of this expedition, this mission. He looked down and shot the man a contemptuous sneer, telling him without saying that 'I don't care what you think, I'm doing it any way' and not caring what the one below would say in response.

"I think we can trust them. And guess what happens if they storm the boat?" Derek asked rhetorically as he spun the locking mechanism, giving it a good tug and a huff as he did so. "No answer?" He glanced back down and shrugged.

The soldier's stare never wavered, and Colonel Baum could feel the dark blue eyes on him still, waiting for him to finish unlocking the hatch. With a sigh of relief and a hiss of incoming air signaling the hatch was unlocked and depressurize, he lifted it with a grunt of effort and a release of his own air held inside his scarred and tired lungs. The hatch quietly squeaked as it fell on its hinges before stopping mere inches, at an obtuse angle, from hitting the blackened, worn deck of the _USS Ohio_.

Colonel Derek Baum sighed, murmuring something to himself about being 'too old' to be 'gallivanting around the world on these crazy missions.' One foot and hand over the other he lifted himself onto the deck, his combat boots gained traction on the deck as he lifted one foot over the edge of the hatch, and this kept him from slipping in the dirty ash water which had successfully muddied the hull of the otherwise majestic war weapon.

"Identify yourself, _soldat_," came a French-accented challenged. There was no light shining on Col. Baum. There was never any light. He looked up, the tarp obstructing his view of the stars. One thing he could always count on, when the clouds weren't too thick, was to see the stars. It gave him strength to look up, towards a place still pure, without war. But there were no stars, not with the covering above the submarine. He sighed. Nothing ever seemed to go his way.

Col. Baum stepped aside as the soldier under him, John Alexander Planck, quickly ascended and shot himself onto the deck, standing side-by-side his commanding officer. Derek had kept his hands at his side, close to his sidearm. Alex Planck had his plasma rifle swung across his chest in a flash, always ready for confrontation. The soldier positioned himself so he was slightly in front of the Colonel, ready to defend him if needed.

Slowly the soldier scanned the other soldiers standing watch over them. Three dozen were arrayed in defensive positions around the docks with dozens more in reserve. The tactical situation was not optimal. Planck had already identified soldiers with Russian produced RPGs and French ATGMs pointed towards him, Derek, and the submarine.

Derek stood confidently on the deck, his right hand resting on the butt of his sidearm. "Colonel Derek Baum. John Connor sent us for Colonel Joan Binochet," Derek yelled into the night. His eyes darted from soldier to soldier, ready to fight if he was forced… he was always ready. But tonight he didn't want to fight. Not tonight.

He thought of how it was different here. In Los Angeles he could never have yelled. No one would have challenged him that loudly. Things were different here. He thought that perhaps the war was not as brutal here, in Europe. Then the smell hit him. Fire. Burning. There was always something burning in this world. He only needed to look above; at the absence of stars and the blackened and gray tarp above to remind him their fight was as hard as his. There was no easy fight in the war against Skynet. There was no region or people which did not fight as hard as the other. Everyone was in the same war for survival.

He looked into the eyes of the soldiers. Fear was the dominant expression. What little light there was from the water hitting their eyes oh so perfectly told him more than any interrogation ever could. Hopefully this would be the last time he would have to fight this war. The weight of fighting this war once and over again was pushing his shoulders down under the strain. He rarely smiled anymore, and his eyes were almost as blank as the machines. Sometimes he wondered if he had any heart left in this conflict, or if he was just going through the motions because that was _expected _of him. But for now he kept himself focused, straight, with his military bearings as he patiently waited for the response to his declaration of identification.

"Ah, Colonel Derek Baum, our American friend," came a reply from the blackness of the port. A woman's voice, it carried far. It was strong. He knew her.

Both Derek and Alex, the two Tech Com soldiers half a world away from their home, could hear the soft sounds of footsteps on concrete, soon accompanied by half a dozen more. From the night a tall woman appeared, hair long and black, tied back. Her skin was slightly tanned. Not uncommon for a soldier constantly in the field. She wore the uniform of a French Army officer. 'J. Binochet' was taped on the right breast pocket of her fatigues. The patch of the _92e Régiment d'Infanterie _was on her left shoulder, barely visible to Alex at the angle the soldier was standing to her.

Her rifle was slung on her shoulder and she stood wide stance, hands on hips, towering over the two soldiers dependent on her will for survival. "You've been promoted," she smiled down at him.

He looked up, straining his eyes as he adjusted to the darkness around him. And the cold. He hadn't noticed it with the soldiers pointing guns at him. But it was cold. Colder than it should be for May. It was always cold now. There was nothing warm left in the world.

"Well, I guess someone thinks I'm doing a good job," he said to her cheerfully, smiling at her. "I'm surprised they haven't made you a general yet. After Berlin," he winked. But she couldn't see it. He could make out a slight shrug and dismissive smile. She waved off the compliment modestly. He subtly shifted his body weight to keep his balance as the cool night wind ripped at his back.

She turned abruptly, her tied hair still flowing in the wind behind her, shouting out orders in French, Polish, and English, spurring her soldiers into action. They quickly lowered a gangplank to the American submarine.

Colonel Baum and Alex walked up first, nodding to a pair of French soldiers standing ready to descend. The two Tech Com soldiers stopped in front of Colonel Binochet.

Her presence was commanding and it was clear she had the respect and loyalty of her hodge-podge collection of soldiers from across Europe. Like many units, they had been caught behind Skynet lines, separated from their main units, and had reformed into a mixed-nationalist unit.

"So, what do you have for us?" She asked as her left eyebrow rose inquisitively. She stood on her toes to take a quick look over Derek's shoulder. More soldiers were exiting the boat. "This is not a gesture of supply and friendship, is it? You need something." She asked, eyes narrowing slightly. Derek could see a faint darkness sliding over her otherwise shining blue eyes.

"No," he walked up, placing his hand gently on her upper arm. "Privately," he whispered.

Nodding slowly she pointed at a dozen soldiers and motioned for them to help the Americans on the boat unload their cargo.

"What is it?"

"Tech Com has intelligence that Skynet found something in Greece, outside Athens about a month ago," he whispered, keeping his eyes up as he lowered his head to talk. He positioned himself so his back was to the water, and he could see all the action happening on the pier. He kept himself scanning the pier, making sure everyone was out of earshot. "We don't know what it is, but we need to get down there." He pulled out a small PDA from his fatigue pockets. "Here, take a look," he handed it to her gently, flicking up the proper map.

Alex Planck had come over quietly without Baum noticing. "They have two companies of T-600s and a platoon of 800s. Two squadrons of HK support and an Ogre detachment," Alex informed her, his voice never deviating from the matter-of-fact, unconcerned tone. "Cameron gave us specific orders to-"

"She's giving orders now?" Col. Binochet asked, immediately picking up on that short, interrupted statement. Her voice had been filled with a mix of shock and disappointment. "Derek…" she looked to him, longing for an explanation. Her eyes demanded that Derek offer a suitable explanation.

Col. Baum shot one of his powerful icy, fiery glares at the soldier to his left. At the right moment the wind ripped up from the ocean, spraying a slightly salty and ash mixture onto the trio. He gritted his teeth, his fist tightening slightly in anger. "General Connor was occupied… wounded, when this intelligence was brought to us. But he _authorized_ the mission," he affirmed. He kept his eyes locked on Alex.

She grabbed his fatigue jacket and brought him closer, further from her soldiers. "The… metals… aren't accepted as much here," she looked towards the soldier now standing behind Baum, keeping her eyes on him, it, as she talked to her friend. "Don't speak of them. I have half a dozen countries in this regiment. It's hard enough keeping us all going. We don't need… complications." She tilted her head, waiting for him to acknowledge her warning.

"I… I trust them," he said slowly. He didn't know why he felt a need to defend them… maybe just this one behind him and the two others on the submarine. He closed his eyes and reopened them slowly as he nodded to Col. Binochet. "We know. But thank you."

"Thank you? For what?" She asked, confused.

"Not telling," he smiled, the tone more of a plea than a statement. But she nodded and he let out the breath he had been holding patiently inside him. "Thank you," he smiled again, his green eyes looking into her blue eyes, illuminated for a moment as a break in the clouds allowed the starlight to touch the Earth ever so briefly before being snatched away once again. Derek took a step back cautiously.

"How many rifles do you have for us?" She asked quickly, defusing the building moment between the two old soldiers. The two old friends.

Alex also took a step back, still keeping his solid and expressionless stare on Baum and Binochet. He felt he had said enough to both of the Colonels for the moment. It was unnecessary to answer any other questions unless directly asked by either. Knowing when to step back was something he and the other has learned long, long ago.

"We have enough for two regiments," Derek said slowly, drawing out the exact numbers to tease his old friend. A smirk formed on the left side of his lips as her eyes widened. The French Colonel lost her military discipline for a moment, forcing her to bring up her hand to hide her wide-open mouth.

"God… how did you manage?" She asked, dumbstruck. "Plasma rifles are in such short supply." She tapped her own rare SCAR-H with attached grenade launcher. "Armor piercing. It works. Sometimes," she stated reluctantly, shrugging her shoulders. "We can do a lot with two regiments worth of plasma rifles."

Derek snorted, holding the precise information from her. He could see that she knew he wouldn't tell her exactly. "We have our sources. I know you want to attack the metal. Hopefully you can drive the metal out of Scz…Scze… uh, so many constants in this damn language."

"Szczecin," she corrected, smiling at his futile attempt. He huffed, rolling his eyes as his failure and her success.

Alex ignored the two, instead walking to the edge of the gangplank and watched as the soldiers quickly unloaded the boxes containing nearly two thousand plasma rifles. Many of the missile tubes had been converted to storage. Alex had voiced his objection to both General Connor and Cameron that it would be a mistake to distribute such valuable weaponry half a world away. But they had insisted. 'Better to build bridges' Alex Planck had been told.

He placed that though into memory of his neural net, and marked it for analysis later. Alex turned his head slightly and listened to the conversation between the two Colonels behind him.

"The Greeks may not let you in their country, Derek," the French Colonel informed him. "They still blame America for what you did. And if they do, I heard the general there isn't very open to attack. You're going to have some Ace to convince him," she warned.

She had brought up Skynet and America again. "Joan…" His voice intensified, taking on a flare of anger and defiance. "I didn't do anything. We didn't do anything. Skynet did it. Skynet." Alex was listening and had heard this conversation a dozen times. "Connor warned everyone. This is Connor's show now. No one listened, not even your people," he pointed out as the argument intensified quickly.

"And Skynet worked for America for the first few years after the holocaust, Derek," she spat. "Your government used Skynet to protect itself!"

Alex could hear Baum sigh against the background noise of soldiers moving crates and the truck diesel engines starting.

"Connor told them, Joan. He told everyone the truth and they ignored him. Everyone ignored him… You trust Connor, right?" Alex heard him pause. He didn't hear any confirmation the French colonel trusted General Connor.

Alex considered if this mission was in jeopardy. He weighed the chance of looking back at the two soldiers, but decided against it. He and his team had travelled through time to save them. But it did not appear that Derek's safety would be in jeapordy. This was just an argument. Listening to the two colonels argue, Alex had remembered he had saved Derek Reese Baum's life twenty-eight times since 2007. That did not include the many indirect times.

Alex focused back on the conversation. "I trust Connor after what he did. But I'm telling you…" he could detect concern in her voice and worry for the safety of Col. Baum. Alex believed the ton superseded a casual relationship. "…be careful. The Greeks aren't the only ones who still blame America."

Alex turned his attention back to the boat and watched as Joanne 'Jo' Soto and Carter Bishop slowly made their way up to him. The three stood exactly three feet from each other, their deep blue eyes their most distinguishing feature. Personal space was not an issue. Each had a heavy plasma rifle draped across their chest.

"They're arguing. The Greeks don't trust us," Jo stated. "It could compromise the mission."

Colonel Baum was in command of the mission, but Alex was the leader of this team. "It shouldn't. We won't do anything to jeopardize the mission." His deep blue eyes met the eyes of the other two team members. They'd been together for nearly twenty years. They'd fought countless battles. He trusted them. They trusted him.

He risked a glance back towards the two human colonels who had now stopped arguing. Derek had his PDA out again, going over the route the Tech Com soldiers would take over land.

"It is approximately 3,000 kilometers to our destination. More if we travel via the Adriatic coast. Alex, you should inform Colonel… Baum we need to leave," the blue eyed terminator said, tilting his head.

"We also need to be cautious of… standing out," Alex said with a slight grin on his face. "Nothing abnormal."

Carter laughed quickly, his warmed breath condensing as it hit the cool night air. "Don't be freaks?" he questioned, looking at the two opposite him and narrowing his eyes. The same slight grin Alex had was on Carter's mouth as well.

"Hey, you three," Derek yelled, motioning them over with his gloved hand. They walked over quickly, but casually. Their quiet steps did not betray what they were under their artificial organic disguise. "Once all our gear and the SEALs are off the good Colonel here," he nodded to their host, "will provide a couple of cars for us." He saw the questioning expression from the three machines. "Skynet patrols have been ignoring civilian traffic… the little there is. We should be safe." He held up his hand, stopping any of them from repeated the tired… motto of his nephew. "There isn't more than an HK squadron between us and Krakow."

Colonel Binochet held up her dirtied hand in silent warning. "But after Warsaw the patrols are more intense. Bucharest in the headquarters for Skynet in the Balkans and they have thousands of their horde there. Be careful." She turned towards Derek. "Head towards Budapest, it's the safest route. Then get to Montenegro. It's one of the few we can control. Stay west of Serbia, along the coast. But not too close. If the Serbs find you… they hate you… they will kill any American. They'd kill Connor if they could."

"We will not let that happen," Alex stated. His tone was neither filled with anger, hatred, or malice towards the Serbians. It was stated as a simple fact. Colonel Binochet nodded slowly.

She turned her full attention back to the only one she even cared about. She knew who the three opposite her were; she'd found out in Germany but had kept the secret after Derek had begged her to. She owed him. But for now, the three _metals_ were not her concern. "You'll need a place to run if they attack." The meaning of _they_ was obvious. "Don't stay too close to the coast. But don't wander too far in. I'm sorry I can't be of more help, but we don't have anyone down there you can trust until Greece. He'll meet you in Grevene… and don't trust them. They'll work with you… but just… be careful, Derek." She looked up at him before quickly moving her head and eyes back towards the blackened and scorched concrete. "Be careful."


	2. Chapter 2

==========Hungary (April 2023)==========

A cycle which had occurred countless times began again as the sun began its slow rise over the horizon as light gradually replaced darkness. Methodically the morning light of dawn began to illuminate the countryside. Though to many humans, they wondered if they preferred the dark over the light. At least in the dark one could not see the destruction, the chaos, the rotting corpses and burnt fields and crumbling cities, and the utter decay of the world around them.

In a quick, swift motion, without jerking or surprise , the man sleeping in the front passenger seat opened his eyes. He suppressed a yawm and the reflexive need to stretch. Decades of fighting had forced his body to be instantly alert the moment he awoke. Such pre-Judgment Day comforts such as yawning or stretching could get a man killed if he was not immediately alert and ready for battle.

As natural as it was to breath, Colonel Derek Reese Baum brought his right hand down to his plasma carbine rifle, safely tucked between his right leg and the passenger side door. He wasn't exactly sure whether it was good or bad that he no longer would reflexively pull his carbine up and point it at the soldier, the machine, next to him in the driver's seat.

In fact, he couldn't remember the last time he had even threatened the machines sitting beside him.

"You know where we are?" Derek asked, forgoing the usual human custom of saying 'good morning.' His question was not directed at a human.

There was a moment of silence between question and answer. "I have perfect navigational abilities," John Alex Planck pointed out. Derek sighed, swiveling his head in disapproval. "We are fifty kilometers outside Pecs. We crossed into Hungary after you fell asleep." He looked at Baum. "We will require diesel soon."

"And we used our last container," he stated, more to himself than the machine next to him. He looked out the window and saw the red and orange streaks of sunlight break over the horizon and pierce the few clouds. It would be a beautiful day; clear blue skies.

He kept his eyes on the rolling hills, the healthy trees, and the lush bushes for far too long. The countryside here hadn't been as ravaged as it had been in the Western United States. There was still plenty of green and plenty of life.

Baum closed his eyes slowly and let out a deep breath. "We'll need to find some gas then." He knew he was too old for this. He was growing more nostalgic and sentimental with each passing day. Every little pleasant thing in the world which reminded him of his nineteen years before Judgment Day was a distraction now.

He knew he wouldn't be going back in time again. This was his last chance to set it right.

The two sat in silence for another fifteen minutes before the two SEALs in the rear passenger seats stirred and awoke as well. The one behind Planck stretched, accidently kicking his chair and quickly apologized. The one behind Derek began laughing at the awkward apology.

Derek, the three terminators, and the SEAL team had all served on dozens of missions together since Judgment Day. And the seven SEALs had unofficially served the young, very young, future General Connor prior to Judgment Day when he was setting up his network to stop Judgment Day. That, obviously, had not happened.

"So where are we?" Petty Officer Second Class Juan Mora asked between a yawn and cough. He extended his left leg, which shook violently as he tried to eliminate the pins and needles sensation from sleeping in such a cramped car. Boxes of anti-biotics, MREs, armored vests, and power cells for plasma rifles had been stacked between him and the petty officer next to him.

"We are approximately thirty-five kilometers from Pecs. We crossed into Hungary after you fell asleep," Planck repeated for the two. He aptly avoided a gaping pothole, swerving the card gently to the right and back to the center of the road. "We passed six civilian vehicles and one military truck last night," he added.

"Oh… thanks," PO2 Mora said, not exactly sure how to respond to the observation on civilian cars. He placed his hands down by his side and pushed himself up to get a better view of the road behind them. "Where's the van and SUV?"

"I believe we are being watched so I ordered Jo and Carter to distance themselves," Planck stated without concern. He waited patiently for Baum to begin yelling at him. Strangely, to the disappointment of the machine, as sapient machines could be disappointed, Col. Derek Reese Baum did not yell. He did not even say anything.

The machine was not disappointed at the lack of yelling, but rather because he had calculated the wrong response from Derek. Humans were always a surprise.

The two SEALs were slightly concerned over the news of being watched, with each eyeing the other and motioning with their heads for the other to ask Baum to ask Planck about what was happening.

"They are-"

"I knew you would elaborate," Derek interrupted. He knew the machines well: don't respond to their ambiguous statements and eventually they will explain everything. He swore his future-past-present-something nephew had sent the machines back to annoy him. And he swore the machines did it on purpose. They were almost as bad as Cameron.

"Yes," Planck deadpanned. "As I was saying," he began again and stopped. Derek expected him to end with 'before I was rudely interrupted' but didn't. "We have been tracked for the past one hour twenty minutes. I detected short range radio communication and spotted men in the tree line on thermal scans. It is most likely local militia. Colonel Binochet did say there may not be any friendly units this far south of Budapest."

Derek kept his eyes ahead on the road, discreetly scanning for any signs of hidden militia prowling the edges of the highways. Trees and brush obstructed most of the view and it would be impossible for him to see any remote cameras or anyone hidden more than a few meters in the thick tree line.

"Do you see anything?" He finally asked the machine driver.

Planck kept his optical sensors locked on the road ahead. "Yes. No. I detected another transmission. There is a roadblock one kilometer ahead."

"We still have twenty MRE cases in Jo's van," PO1 Joseph Adelman said. "That should be enough… bribe some people, get some diesel?"

Mora snickered and just patted his plasma rifle, the compact carbine was discreetly hidden under a blanket he had draped across his lap during the night. The heater in the car was barely functional and the cold was brutal. PO1 Adelman rolled his eyes and brushed the thought away of shooting their way out with a dismissive flick of his wrist. The petty officer sighed and continued his search for any lookouts.

Derek raised himself in his seat and leaned forward. Planck looked over, tilting his head slightly. To him, humans did strange things sometimes. Leaning forward a couple of feet was irrational to Planck, even after spending over twenty years working with humans in the future and the past, their mannerisms and habits were innately illogical. And most of their mannerisms were silly. As an infiltrator he had been forced to mimic some and in the sixteen years he had spent in this time line, had even learned to appreciate some. But leaning forward three feet would not increase the visual clarity of the two dozen men at the roadblock. Planck believed it gave humans a false sense of security or control in such situations. If it made Derek calmer, he would not comment. The human soldiers needed to be calm if they were forced to fight.

Alex Planck began to slow the car, his metal foot applying the right amount of pressure to stop the car approximately forty meters from the roadblock. Jo and Carter had increased their speed and parked behind him, each separated by ten meters. The other two machines stepped out.

He stepped out of the car; a small MP5-K was hidden discreetly under his jacket from a concealed shoulder strap. Bringing his plasma carbine would immediately reveal him and the others as soldiers, possible Tech Com. That could result in hostilities, depending on how these locals viewed the North American resistance force.

Alex looked over, noting Derek had unbuckled his seat belt and was checking his plasma carbine power cell. "Derek, please remain in the vehicle," Planck said, leaning down and popping his head back into the car as he heard Col. Baum's door click open.

He stood up and out of the car and leaned over the roof. "First, it is Colonel Baum. Second, I am the ranking officer here. Third="

Planck shot him a slightly sardonic smile. "I know. Of course. But I am also to keep you and the men here safe. We need everyone to complete our mission in Athens. If you died here it would be in vain. Carter and I will handle this." He kept his body rigid as he said this and his voice flat.

Derek eyed him suspiciously and threw up his hands, not saying a word and motioned for Planck to move forward. Both the machine and the Colonel knew when arguing with the other devolved into an exercise in futility. Here, now, Derek silently admitted defeat to himself and conceded without further argument.

He did not re-enter the vehicle but stood outside watching.

He kept his plasma carbine within easy reach. With decades of war behind him Colonel Derek Reese Baum knew when he was being watched. As did the SEALs, who had exited the vehicle and were also on edge, ready to grab their rifles without a moment of hesitation.

Planck surveyed the land, scanning it diligently. There had been a battle here. A kilometer from the roadblock on his right was the smoking remains of a small village. Small holes dotted the side of the road. Trees had been splintered and broken. There was shrapnel and an unexploded mortar shell six meters off the main road. Hundreds of brass casing littered the pot-hole laden road, dried blood was everywhere. Discreet bodily left-overs, small pieces of intestine, bone fragments, and other human remains were still present. It looked like the soldiers had not had enough time to clear the road.

A small fire had engulfed portions of the brush on the left, and two dead bodies, multiple bullet holes were laying in a ditch. There were nearly two dozen makeshift graves. There were probably multiple bodies in each.

Everything had been taken from humanity, even death. In death one was still not alone and at peace.

The battle had, to a machine, clearly been human versus human. There were no signs of Skynet weaponry. No plasma weaponry burns. And the village was still standing, though smoke rose from where it had been hit. And three civilian trucks, each with machine guns, sat behind the roadblock, smoldering and smelling of burnt paint and flesh. Two were oriented in a manner in which they were heading towards the village. One was oriented defensively behind a sandbag-wood wall. Additional vehicles were arrayed haphazardly on the sides of the road, the ugly scars of bullet holes and dried blood was the only marker that a human had died in them.

Seven of the armed militia came up, holding out their rifles, pointing at him and the car. Behind them a large heavy machinegun was directed at the three men in the car. Three came up in front of Alex Planck and Carter Bishop, with two arrayed on each side and ten meters from them to catch them in crossfire.

There were makeshift defensive positions, as well as a small network of trenches running on each side of the road and into the tree line. The roadblock itself was constructed of large trees, cut down and copped into three meter long logs and placed at staggered intervals in the road. It was crude, but effective. It would stop anything short of an armored vehicle. It would stop any roaming militias or gangs, not Skynet Centaurs or Ogres.

As the two machines and the Hungarians had walked towards the other, Alex and the other machines meticulously picked their potential targets. Using their wireless communications capability they coordinated what they would do: Planck would kill the men approaching and Carter would kill the sentry manning the machinegun and sweep the left side of the road. Jo had stepped out but was waiting at the vehicles. She would fire on the men hiding in the tree line on her side.

The three machines knew Derek Baum, even lacking the optical abilities of a Terminator, had spotted the men on his side of the tree line as well. He was a very efficient, deadly soldier.

"Who are you?" The leader said in his native Ugric-based tongue. He kept his hand steady on the grip of his rifle, his index finger straight but ready to fly to the trigger and fire on the two men standing before him.

His clothes were a jumble of old Hungarian army fatigues for pants, a few long sleeve shirts and a turtle neck for his upper body, with a light tactical vest holding spare clips and a grenade on his chest. The man's hair was long, coming over the ears, but neat. He had a thin, brown bears. Like many who had fought, his eyes were empty and shallow, and a cold glisten sparkled when he blinked.

"We're just passing through," Planck responded in Czech. He changed to Slovak. "We're just passing through," he repeated. His accent was perfect. He spoke two hundred and seventeen languages.

The leader smiled, acknowledging he understood the language. Cautiously he took a couple of steps towards the two machines, his boots crunching on the gravel and dirt and spent shell casing, still completely unaware of what was hidden below their synthetic skin.

"How old are you two… twenty-two…twenty-three?" He asked. The two machines did not understand this line of questioning. The man squinted his dark brown eyes. He looked them over, head to toe and then back up again. His eyes wavered for a moment too long on where Alex had hidden his weapon. "I'm… call me… Graszi. And I can tell," he switched to English, "you two are Americans. And no American civilians would be here, not now. So that means… soldiers." He kept his eye contact with Planck. Other than the sense of hopelessness over a forlorn existence from 'Grazsi's' eyes, the man kept his face completely blank and expressionless.

He took another step forward, half turning towards them and presenting his right side. A large scar was visible now, on the side of his face, running from behind his ear down his neck. It almost looked like a plasma burn. Surviving near miss plasma bolts was rare; the heat could have burned the skin off of his face, or blistered the skin until it peeled slowly and painfully off. This man was very, very lucky.

Grazsi scanned them again from their toes to the head. "Yes… definitely American. And well fed. No sunburns, no scars, nice skin… if only we could have it so well like you Americans," he added sarcastically.

Grazsi was correct. The two were young, as they had be designed to fit in with John Connor in his past. If they were in a pre-Judgment Day Earth they could easily be identified as college students. And their skin would never age, and it would never be sunburned, and it would never scar or show any signs of malnutrition as long as there was energy in their power cells.

Planck quickly weighed his options, his neural net processing the body-language markers, Grazsi's vocal stress, the tactical situation, and hundreds of possibilities this conversation could turn. He quickly decided lying to the man would be counter-productive. His psychological subroutines had analyzed the inflection and tone in 'Graszi's' voice. He was convinced they were neither Czech nor Polish.

If the situation demanded it both Alex and Carter would terminate the men blocking their path. Getting between a Tech Com terminator and their mission was not something many, human or machine, lived to tell about. But all Tech Com terminators were taught that human life was sacred and should never be taken out of convenience or annoyance. There was no reason to terminate the men here; they were no threat. Alex, a sapient machine, could empathize with their point of view; he and Carter and Baum and the others could be a threat to _them_, the people here in this village. It certainly appeared they had been recently attacked.

And there would be enough death in the days to come. Even more dead to add to the uncountable numbers of corpses assembled on the Earth.

"Yes. We are just passing through. We need diesel. We have twenty MRE cases. Enough to feed your men here twice a day for three weeks," he stated. Diplomacy would be the prudential course of action.

Graszi smirked and looked back to his friends, loudly shouting what they had offered and throwing his hands up in excitement and to rile his men. A few of the men shrugged their shoulders, but most of them didn't respond. He dug into his jacket pocket, pulling out a cigarette. "Light?" He asked. The two machines shook their heads. "Disappointing," he informed them, pulling out his own lighter.

"Smoking is unhealthy," Carter told him, deadpan. The out of place comment meant to gauge his reaction. Was this man laid back, confrontational, aggressive? A subtle mix of body language and vocal stress would tell the machines everything they needed to know.

"So is radiation. And so are bullets. And so are Skynet plasma bolts. But we aren't complaining much, are we?" He directed towards his men. They all shook their heads, grunted, sighed, or didn't care. Grazsi pulled down his wool beanie down over his ears after he left the cigarette to dangle in his mouth. "So, what am I going to do with you two?" He looked over their shoulder, nodding towards the vehicles. "And that pretty woman back there…" the corners of his lips came up in a devilish smile.

Alex Planck had of course kept calm during this typical and tiring exchange. Militias had sprung up in every nation on Earth, from America to Canada to Chile to India. Some were professional, some were professional if one had sufficient bribes such as food or medication, and some were of course barbaric.

John Connor had sent the three machines on a mission to kill on particularly gruesome militia which had arisen in early 2020 outside Reno, Nevada. It had been large, nearly four hundred men and women. And brutal. They'd ravaged the refugee centers and killed and raped thousands. They had been led by a former disgraced Tech Com major, her name long since forbidden from being spoken. Her crime had been the brutal torture and murder of a group of refugees, accused, but never proven, of being Skynet sympathizers. She had escaped from custody and fled. The three machines had meticulously ended her reign of terror over Reno and terminated her lieutenants and her most devoted of followers.

Alex and Carter both considered whether this man was an analogue of that woman.

Bravado and showmanship had also become part of the post-Judgment Day culture. One was expected to sound tough, make threats, implications, and be aggressive. But not many took it to the extreme of actual follow-through.

"We are just passing through and need some diesel and we'll be on our way," Planck said one last time. "We have food."

The man jutted his chin out, motioning to the left side of Planck's jacket. "What's under there?" he asked seriously, looking the machine in the eye. Sensing his challenge would go unanswered, Grazsi smiled. "I know you're armed. If you weren't you'd be a fucking idiot," he told him plainly. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew out a lung full of smoke towards Alex. He didn't cough.

Planck showed him the MPK and then quickly closed his jacket again. The machine ally kept the man's eyes, meeting his with his own, blinking only when necessary. The human across from Planck was cool, calm, and in control. Such a man either extremely helpful or extremely dangerous and there was never a middle ground. Not in this post-apocalyptic, burnt world.

The man snickered again, rapping his fingers on the grip of his rifle, a reliable, old Russian AK-101 assault rifle. He sighed, continuing to rap his fingers and tap his foot on the gravel and dirt covering the road.

Grazsi looked down and bit his lower lip before looking back up. "You know what is strange?" He asked, not expecting an answer and not waiting for a reply. He walked closer and began to circle behind the two, one of his men following. "We are in a war for survival and man still kills man. We each tell ourselves we hate the machines. Do _you_ hate the _machines_?" There was an unnatural stress on those two words.

"I hate Skynet," Planck responded coolly. "Are there machines here?" He asked. He dared to dance this dance with the Hungarian named Grazsi. He turned to face the calm man behind him. "I see burned technicals and craters. Mortars. And smoke from your village." He tilted his head. "Skynet did not attack you," he told him, matter-of-fact. He raised h is eyebrows to affirm his statement.

The man known as Grazsi laughed, patting Planck on the side of the arm. He held up his index and middle finger with the cigarette burning slowly between them. He pointed and shook his two fingers while smiling.

"Not usually," he stated slowly, answering the question first. "But…oh, how right you are," he let out a long breath out of his flared nostrils, his lips pressed together tightly. "Yes. We were attacked. Man still fights man."

"Man has fought man since the dawn of time. Machines have only been here for twelve years," Carter said, adding his little tidbit of wisdom to this strange and spontaneous philosophical discussion which had crept upon the soldiers. "It is in our nature to fight." If only Grazsi knew how true that was.

"Unfortunate," he said, dragging the word out with a long sigh. "You say you have food. We have diesel. But we need it for our generators. Why should we give it to you when we could take your food? We have half a dozen men with eyes and rifles and rockets ready to attack your cars," Grazsi informed them.

Planck smiled. "Yes. You have two RPGs on the right side of the road, hidden in the trees," he turned around and motioned with his hand, "there and there. A third man there," he pointed, "and three more on the other side, there, there, and there." He turned back around, looking down at Grazsi. He cocked his head, waiting for a reply. "And using RPGs would result in the food being wasted, as you do not know which vehicles they are in."

Silence drifted between the two groups. The face of Grazsi was plain; revealing no shock or embarrassment his men had been discovered. The faces of the men behind him were less than unemotional. One had begun to slightly shake. That man was young. This may very well be his first firefight, though unlikely. Being young meant nothing in this world.

Grazsi snorted, the warmth of the air from his lungs condensed with the cool morning air, allowing his breath to be visible for just a fleeting moment. He threw the cigarette to the ground, stomping on it to make sure it was out after it had burned to his fingers in the past moments of silence.

"Do you have medication? Antibiotics?" He asked calmly and slowly. His eyes told him much more than the questions. "Medication is far more valuable than food." He waved off to the side, at nothing in particular. "We can kill critters and eat them. We can't will antibiotics into existence." He said the last sentence with such remorse and longing, like he had failed someone.

"For diesel. Enough for our vehicles, 1,200 kilometers each," Planck countered. "How many do you protect?" Planck had realized the way he had asked for antibiotics that it was not for him or his men. Not for them first. His eyes had told them it was for someone else.

"There are three hundred women and children in the village," he told him quietly. "Most of the men have been killed in the past months defending them." He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again. The internal debate raging, he finally decided to say what he had wanted to. "Most die from such simple infections. It is something that would be cured with a shot fifteen years ago." He looked at the gravel, rubbing a cylindrical shell casing under his boot. "We had a young woman die from a simply cut from a shovel. There was barely any blood. We washed the wound and poured alcohol on it. But she died. She developed sepsis. It's sad."

Planck considered this story about defending the village was most likely accurate from how the burned and blackened vehicles had been splayed. Planck nodded. "We can provide medication for a few months. Summer is coming. It should last at least until mid-winter if you ration."

"Medication and food for diesel," he said triumphantly.

"Can we trust you?" Carter asked, keeping his voice decidedly neutral. But there was a discreet tone of distrust, a 'don't-you-dare' betray us connotation.

"We keep our word," Grazsi said solemnly. "In this war, man fights man _and _machine and the machines _only _fight man. We're killing ourselves faster than we are the machines. You've shown compassion. We will show you ours. We can scrounge more diesel before the winter, and the cold will be gone soon," he shrugged, making the best of the situation. "We must show each other our humanity. Thank you." He turned and began walking to the roadblock. "Take your cars one kilometer up the road and then left at the red marker. We have diesel waiting for you there."

Planck and Carter nodded. The two began to turn when the man snapped his fingers, regaining the attention of the two.

"One moment please," he said, holding up his index finger. He walked towards Planck and leaned close to him. "I told you we were watching you for over an hour, yes?" He asked. Planck nodded. "That man, I know him. Baum. Not personally but I know of him. And I know you are soldiers." He leaned back, looking Planck in the eyes. Leaning back in he said, again so quiet Planck was the only one that could hear. "Do you know why I think we will win this war, even when mankind still fights itself over old, forgotten injuries? I've heard rumors about Tech Com… but…" he paused for a moment, thinking of what he would say next. He lowered his voice. "Machines like to think they make no mistakes. They're too self-confident." He paused for a moment, keeping his eyes level with John Planck's throat. He looked up. "But humans cannot drive cars at night with no head lights and no night vision." He leaned back, slapping Planck on the side of the arm. He sighed as he shook his head, bringing his index finger up and tapping his temple in a not-so-subtle reminder no one, man or machine, was above mistakes. "Like I said… we hear the rumors…"

He took a few steps back and walked backwards, facing the machine. "Good luck hunting Skynet," he winked, turned and gave Planck a backward wave as he walked off.

The machine stood there a moment, himself turning and heading back for the cars. That, right there, reinforced John Planck's belief that humans would one day win this war. They always surprised him. And the man was right. Even as a machine, making his own choices and his own decisions, he was too confident. It was a flaw no sapient machine had been able to overcome. Not yet.


	3. Chapter 3

==========Coast of Montenegro (April 2023)==========

"It's quite a sight," Derek said quietly, letting the slight breeze blow in his hair and the light rain peck at his jacket.

Alex hadn't been surprised the man had heard him approach. His steps had been light and gentle, the opposite of what the steps of a four hundred-sixty pound terminator should be, but still the man in front of him had heard him. It was the war; he'd fought in this war longer than any other human on Earth due to time travel.

It was partly the war, and partly human intuition. For Derek to guess it was one of the machines, and Alex in particular, it required that innate human ability to somehow guess right, or get a 'gut feeling'. The complexity and skill in human intuition Alex had seen in countless humans, Derek Baum and John Connor specifically, almost rivaled the probability and statistical powers of his neural net processors.

The terminator stepped up parallel with Baum, on his right. He was a few meters away from an aged and browned stone wall, marking the end of solid ground and the beginning of a long, hard fall to the forest below.

The two were on a high bluff, a 'scenic stop' as the writing on the weathered sign had informed them. That is what Alex had read and translated and told Derek when their rear vehicle had broken down. Derek could speak English, Spanish, and French, but not the Ijekavian-Štokavian dialect the Montenegrins spoke and wrote in.

Before Judgment Day there might have been a dozen cars parked here, filled with families or travelers but now there were just soldiers, stopped due to an inconvenience, only admiring the scene because there was nothing else to do.

Twenty minutes before Alex had joined him Colonel Derek Baum had walked off towards the 'scenic stop' and against Alex's better judgment, had let him walk by himself. Today was not the day to remind him of his safety. Today was the day it had happened, thirteen years ago. It was the day he had lost them.

"…always did like the water," he said. He was not talking about himself.

"It's just as blue as when I saw it last," Alex said, a lie. Nothing had escaped untouched. But this lie was a 'good lie', as he had been taught many years ago.

The terminator looked out, erasing the tactical displays in his HUD, giving himself a brief, uncluttered view of the world around him. He wanted to appreciate the sight for what it was. A still, almost pristine sea which contrasted with the polluted and blackened waters around the western United States, which were muddied with the industrial wastes of Skynet factories and the broken scraps and debris of war.

And the millions of bodies Skynet had dumped from its extermination camps. Skynet didn't bother to burn the bodies, it wanted the world to see _everything_ it did.

He wanted to appreciate it, the scene, the forest and the sea, Alex did. But his threat assessment subroutines kept him alert, constantly forcing him to scan for danger, switching his vision and sensory modes to heat, EM, ultraviolet, motion. Unlike a human, he could never just 'take it in' and relax.

Alex enjoyed the natural view, appreciating that he was seeing now as humans saw; or at least to his understanding. But within microseconds warnings flashed in his lower visual fields. He mentally sighed. There was no escape. His tactical HUD reinitialized zero point zero seven four seconds after he shut it down. The HUD would always turn itself back on, it just happened, just like a human would breath after passing out; it just was.

They were built for one purpose.

Baum didn't look over, but kept his head forward looking out. "When were you here?" He asked half-way between an accusation and a general interest. He walked forward, his combat boots shuffling the gravel underneath his feet. He let out a long, deep sigh as he slowly closed and opened his war-weary eyes and leaned forward on the weathered and beaten stone wall, leaning his hands on the moldy top. He recoiled for a moment, looked down, and brushed the mold and lichen off the stones, then placed his hands back down to lean forward and rest.

"I bought the isotopes for our weapons five kilometers from here, in 2009. The arms dealer met me here at the village. When-"

Derek nodded slowly, sighing. "I remember now," he cut him off. He didn't want to remember. "Yeah… did you kill him?"

"Her," Alex corrected. "And yes. She was a-"

"Bad person," Derek finished for him, bringing his right hand up he ran it through his dark brown hair, which was now laced with gray streaks, as he slowly sighed. He felt completely lost on this day of days. There were only a few people left in this world he still fought for.

Alex thought he should leave him alone, move back to the vehicles. But they all had specific orders. John and Cameron had been adamant about his orders. This mission would be long and hard, crossing the Atlantic, driving across Europe to only fight a battle at its end. And today was the day of Derek's loss. And next week was the day of everyone else's loss.

He'd already gone against those orders by letting Derek wander off for nearly twenty minutes on his own, though Alex had tracked him on his motion scanners. Instead he decided to wait. Everyone needed to be by themselves from time to time. Both machines and humans needed to be alone; especially humans.

"Jo just told me that the van is ready," Alex said after Jo signaled him over their wireless data link.

Derek smiled, looking over towards a small village. "Peaceful, isn't it?" He motioned with a slight movement of his chin. It was the typical picturesque fishing village which dotted the coasts of the Mediterranean and Adriatic nations.

Alex looked over, nodding his agreement that it was 'peaceful.'

Derek couldn't see the blood stains on the whitewashed walls, or the skeletons lying in the street.

"What do you three talk about over your link?" He asked. He wasn't exactly sure why he wanted to know.

Over the last sixteen years he'd asked little questions of the machines, usually ones pertaining to their performance and tactical capabilities. But in the last few years he'd changed his questioning, instead focusing on more personal ones. They were questions like 'what do you talk about over your link' and 'what do you three do at night' and 'do you get bored just sitting there?' Many of these same questions had been asked half a dozen times in the past, now they were asked out of interest, almost like Derek was trying to understand the machines and their motivation. At first it was to point out the difference between man and machine. Now, that topic never came up.

His world, the first world he had been a part of was so black and white with _us_ against _them_. But his new world, this one, had so much more gray to it. He'd fought for thirty-two years now, sixteen years in each time, in both wars, in both worlds. Half of that time had been spent in a world where machines constantly tried to kill him and the ones he loved. Then suddenly he was thrown back in time and somehow found himself fighting side-by-side with machines. Soon, within days, he'd have spent the majority of both wars fighting side-by-side with machines. It was confusing. Frustrating.

Alex shrugged. "This and that," he responded vaguely. It was the typical machine response. Usually it had elicited a sigh from Derek or John or Sarah, but today, Derek did not respond. Alex had his attention focused now on the horizon, at the rising dot he could just barely see. "There's a Hydra out there," Alex raised his finger, pointing, "on the horizon." He wanted to distract Derek from that line of questioning.

The Hydra was an autonomous Skynet submersible, capable of launching drones to augment its detection and attack capabilities. This one had launched a radar drone into the sky, which was now scanning for sea or air targets.

"Hunting," Derek said.

"Hunting," was the affirmation. "We should go. We still have a long night of driving," he said, turning and begin a slow walk back to the cars.

Derek hesitated a moment, taking in one last view of the ocean. As he turned he saw two faint flashes of light. Missile launches. The Hydra had found targets. They _always_ found something to kill.

* * *

==========Grevena, Greece=========

The second-to-last leg of the journey had been largely uneventful. The Tech Com colonel, the three machines, and the SEALs had witnessed local military forces take down a flight of two aerial HKs in central Albania. But with strict orders to not intervene unless directly threatened, the eleven resistance fighters had kept moving.

They had arrived in the morning in Grevena, and had moved cautiously through the fields surrounding the two. They were still four hundred kilometers from Athens, but Grevena was where intelligence had placed the main location of the central Hellenic Army remnants. It comprised units from the 1st Army at Larissa and the 2nd Army at Veroia.

There were other facilities throughout Greece housing military remnants and survivor-soldiers, but if the Tech Com fighters wanted help, they needed the forces in Grevena.

Much of Greece had been left unscathed by the nuclear holocaust, but Skynet had moved swiftly in their first major Mediterranean offensive of 2018 to 2021 where they had secured Gibraltar (since lost to a NATO/North African counter offensive in 2022) and seized the major islands of the Mediterranean such as Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Crete, and pushed up towards the Dardanelles and Bosporus, seizing the former before being pushed back by a coalition of convenience of Turkish, Arab, and Israeli forces outside Istanbul.

Grevena had been the location of the Hellenic Army's secret command bunkers, buried in the Pindus Mountains, and had been designated their fall back location should Turkey invade or the Soviets annihilate the main cities during the Cold War. They'd been lucky. Skynet's initial launch of the American nuclear arsenal and the Russian counter-attack (and NATO/Chinese counter-counter-attacks) had spared Grevena and this oversight, coupled with quick acting Greek commanders, provided the opportunity for Greeks to expand it, build it up, and form it into, presumably, their main secret base of resistance against Skynet.

But like many military bases, refugees had migrated towards it, for protection, food, and running water. It was not so much a secret anymore, sadly morphing into a 'hidden' base… hidden by a decrepit, sprawling refugee city populated by tens of thousands of Greeks

It had been quiet in the early morning as three vehicles had driven past the refugee settlements dotting the territory.

The cars had been stopped at the outer limits of the territory and were not being escorted by four Greek military vehicles and two dozen soldiers.

Like every refugee city in the world, the smell and squalor was sickening. For the Tech Com fighters, having spent so much time in clean, sanitized submarines with recycle air, the stench from tons of human refuse and waste was overwhelming. The machines could turn off their olfactory receptors, but humans could not. Trash and sewage must have been collecting there for years.

Rats were rampant. And feral dogs. But most dogs had been killed and eaten by human survivors.

There were makeshift water delivery systems, almost reminiscent of old Roman aqueducts, instead made of large and small plastic pipes. The pipes were dozens of different sizes and lengths, and it was clear to any experienced soldier that many sections had been melted from plasma bolts, only to be replaced and melted again.

As the soldiers had driven in, the machines had communicated with each other over their data links. They had each spotted dozens of individuals infected with diseases resultant from the poor sanitation and the subhuman living conditions. It was no different than any other large human camp.

The region had been a farming and agricultural territory of Greece before Judgment Day. There were crops and fields, but the Tech Com soldiers could see the burnt and ash remains of some fields destroyed by Skynet napalm. In one of the fields they had seen the wreckage of nearly two dozen armored vehicles, their metal skins burned, boiled, and blistered from Skynet plasma weaponry.

What could be salvaged had been, leaving some vehicles only as burnt metal skeletons. But the intense heat from plasma weaponry twisted and bent the metal in unnatural ways, weakening its structural integrity to the point it was unsalvageable for anything but shelter. Skynet left little for humanity to use.

While vegetation, trees, grass, and weeds had begun to reclaim the ruined cities of humanity and degrade the already failed infrastructure, Skynet was always watching, ready to attack. During a drought Skynet would attack water delivery systems. During a harvest Skynet would fire incendiaries at fields.

It was like the machine intelligence was playing with its prey.

Once the three vehicles had parked Derek Baum, John Alex Planck, and Chief Petty Officer Albert Franks had been escorted into a small building in the North West sector of the refugee camp. They were not trusted to be escorted into the main command bunkers.

Alex began surveying the building and the office for possible threats.

The commanding officer of the base was sitting in what was once a bedroom of a building which was once a Greek country manor house. An Orthodox cross hung behind the soldier, sitting behind the worn and aged desk, stacked with papers and a barely functional laptop computer closed on the left corner. A half empty bottle of bourbon with an obviously used (and dirty) glass sat resolutely on the right hand side. Half a dozen pencils, most of them whittled down to half their lengths were neatly organized on the far edge of the desk, closest to the Tech Com soldiers.

Except for the cross on the wall, the entire room was bare. The red wallpaper had peeled away, leaving faint and disgusting looking yellow glue between the tears in the paper.

On the right side of the desk Alex noted a small book stand, with a motley collection of old Greek classics, two translated John Grisham novels, with a few Star Wars and Xeelee Sequence novels added to the eclectic mix. An open Bible was on the top

Major General Iannsis Pilipis, the ranking Greek officer, sat comfortably across from them, the three Tech Com soldiers, still standing. They didn't stand at attention, as Pilipis had implied they should, but they did stand respectfully.

General Pilipis seemed to have once been a man of action, but now was a bureaucrat, and had been the first high ranking official to stonewall the Tech Com Special Forces team since they had arrived in Europe.

He was tall, six foot three, lean, and well-built. A scan by Alex placed his estimated weight at roughly one-hundred seventy-five pounds. He was balding and his skin was slightly darker than the standard Mediterranean olive complexion, with a slight hint of Spanish ancestry. The left side of his face had been significantly scarred from Skynet plasma weaponry, and his left eye did not have complete movement. The iris was also a lighter shade of brown than his right eye, most likely from the flash effects of near-miss plasma bolts.

It was clear from his wounds h had participated in battles against Skynet. But now he didn't seem to _understand_ what was happening. The Major General did not seem to _understand_ that by sitting here, doing nothing, and letting Skynet come in and burn fields or melt water pipes… nothing would happen. It would be a perpetual cycle of death and destruction, with humanity forced from the cities and civilization to an existence as animals, living in squalor and filth.

"Skynet comes three, maybe four times a year with a few aerials to harass us, nothing more," he said, waving off Derek's previous plea for assistance in this battle. He took a sip of some red-orange liquor with the smell distinctive of old, aged bourbon. "We fought off their last attack, downed an aerial and shot up three 600's. They haven't been back since. That was four months ago," he stated, triumphantly. He leaned back in his rickety old brown chair which was a thin and plain piece one would find in a school house or waiting room.

Holding his glass he held out his index finger, indicating for the three to wait for a moment before opening his desk drawer with his free hand. He grabbed something in his fist, a sly half-smile on his face. Opening up he threw the contents on the desk. There were smashed Skynet T-600 CPUs. His brown eye and discolored light one were beaming with pride.

"Our little victory prizes," he gloated. "That's four right there. We've got a little trophy case in the main bunker and about three dozen 600 CPUs, about five times that in 500s and 400s. We only defend ourselves, so Skynet ignores us for the most part," he added solemnly.

Alex, like Derek and Chief Franks, just stood and looked down. None of them were impressed. Each of the three Tech Com soldiers had probably killed at least that many, if not more Terminators, by himself. And the general was boasting about less than a hundred his entire regiment had destroyed.

To Alex, this general was clearly not understanding the situation. A hundred or so destroyed terminator chips was nothing, not when Skynet had untold millions terrorizing the world. Tech Com could destroy a hundred terminators in a day, on the Los Angeles front alone.

Derek shook his head, but not in disbelief. This attitude, the attitude that if you 'live and let live' with Skynet, and that Skynet would do the latter was completely crazy. It was, to him, ridiculous that anyone could still believe Skynet wouldn't kill everyone off when it could.

The only reason Skynet hadn't annihilated humanity yet was because it didn't have that capability. But Derek, Alex, and Franks all knew Skynet wouldn't stop until it achieved that capacity for destruction.

"General, they've got nearly a hundred T-600s, two companies, and a platoon of T-800s. We need your assistance with this operation," Derek stated again, keeping the agitation and urge to step up and punch the general in the teeth at bay. Derek often believed he could banish any emotion from his face, adopt the expressionless machine-like facial placidity of his nephew. But anyone who knew him only had to see the slight gloss in his eyes to know he was angry.

"I send… how many men? A battalion? A regiment? Ha! I'd need ten to one odds, heavy armor, _and_ artillery just to guarantee it is not a wholesale slaughter against my men!" General Pilipis slowly rolled his eyes, overdoing the expression. He took another sip of his bourbon, making sure to enjoy it and make sure the three Americans across from him knew he was enjoying it as well with a slight smack of his lips. A broad, animated smile formed after he smacked his lips together slightly. "I send you soldiers and Skynet will push its forces down from Bucharest or west from the Dardenelles." He put his glass down, running his finger on the brim. Sitting back up quickly, he picked up the glass, holding it so he could use his index finger to point at Baum. "And why are you really here? North America is Skynet central. Why don't you Americans go, and for once, leave the rest of the world to the rest of the world?" He sighed.

Alex leaned over, whispering into Baum's ear. He nodded and Baum took out a small electronic device and placed it on the General's desk. Derek slid it over the desk, upsetting the meticulously placed arrangement of pencils. Pilipis looked at it with scorn, refusing to touch it, like it would infect him with disease.

"It's a UMPC," Derek said. "Ultra mobile personal computer… go ahead, open it," he offered, flicking his chin out towards the general and the device.

"I know what it is. I'm not an idiot," he hissed. Pilipis waved him off before cautiously taking the UMPC and popping it open like an old cell phone. He hit the green power button. He looked at the image, his eyes wide. He shot up in his seat.

"What the fuck is this?" He demanded, flicking the UMPC back to Baum, who caught it with his right hand as it hit his chest. "That's our fucking camp. I should have you taken out and shot. Skynet spies! Guards!" Five guards with assault rifles, stationed right outside the door quickly entered, taking up a half-circle formation around the Tech Com soldiers.

Alex sighed. The general was acting irrationally now. "Relax General," Alex said. "Please sit down," he added in calmly, his voice modulating to have a serene, soothing tone. The General remained standing, but the blood from his reddened and angry face began to return to its normal coloring. "If we were Skynet spies, you would already be dead. And Colonel Binochet as well," Alex pointed out. She had been able to contact Pilipis and inform him of their eventual arrival.

"So what is this? Huh?" General Pilipis immediately demanded, keeping his voice low but stern. His teeth were gritted and his temporalis and masseter muscles were contracting and relaxing as if in spasm. He kept looking down to the UMPC display and back up at Baum, then Alex, then CPO Franks.

"It's a secure data link to Tech Com, bounced off satellites, and they're providing real time, _satellite_ imagery of your entire camp," Alex said matter-of-fact.

General Pilipis snorted, closing his eyes and opening them quickly as they darted from Baum to Planck to the quiet CPO Franks. "You want me to believe you have a satellite? And a…a… secured… ha… a secured data uplink half a world away? You think I'm stupid, kid?"

The one thing Alex had hated being called worse than 'metal' was 'kid.' He'd accepted the appearance of a twenty to twenty-two year old, as had Carter and Jo, to protect the Connors and Reese in 2007. But now it was annoying. It was difficult convincing older colonels, commanders, captains, admirals, and generals to work with the Tech Com resistance when a twenty/twenty-two year old was telling a seasoned soldier what was supposedly best for them.

In annoyance Alex narrowed his own eyes. If the situation escalated he could push both Colonel Baum and CPO Franks to the ground before the guards could unsafe their weapons, kill the two behind him, rip off their arms, and use their own arms to beat the rest to death. But that thought was in his neural net for approximately three point seven nanoseconds before being dismissed. It did give him a little smile, which appeared for a brief, fleeting moment on his face, before it returned to his neutral disposition.

"General," Alex said calmly before Baum or Franks could respond, "We do not use signal fires… we're called _Tech Com_ for a reason. Skynet is technology. We cannot win unless we use technology. Connor and his engineers have control of a sufficient number of satellites with secure data uplink capabilities." He pointed towards the UMPC. "Connect that to your command network, or hell, to any computer. You'll have a secure uplink to Tech Com."

"The latest intelligence we can provide you," Baum added in. "We can coordinate. Or just communicate. Or you can just ask us to tell you when the next Skynet raid is going to happen. I don't know," he shrugged, leaving the options for the UMPC link open for the Greek general to decide on.

"We've used it for years. Never been compromised. Not once," CPO Franks said, finally speaking. He wasn't a talkative man.

Pilipis laughed and pointed, shaking his finger at them. He waved his soldiers back to wait outside. "I see what you're doing, and I give you credit for it," he tilted his head with a small smirk forming. "Give me this and I get dependent on John Connor and his Tech Com band to give me intelligence. I'm not a fucking idiot." His expression immediately turned sour once again. He slowly sat back down, taking another quick drink of his brandy, finishing it off it one large gulp.

"We aren't playing you general. What else do you want? What do you think Skynet will do after Athens? It's consolidating on Crete and the Dardanelles. You've got millions of people to think about… thirty thousand sitting right outside here," Baum pointed out, appealing to his humanity. He waved behind himself to emphasize the point. "You said America is Skynet central. Yeah, it is. We've got it bad. But you're going to have it just as bad if Skynet beats us and can focus here. If we can coordinate we can hit those metal fuckers at once and smash them to pieces. Take them apart bolt by bolt," he slammed his left fist into his right palm.

The Greek general considered this as he slowly massaged his hands together. He cautiously dared to look to CPO Franks' right, where a small window looked out onto the refugee camp. A slight wind change a few minutes ago had brought the smell of sewage and trash into the small meeting house. Pilipis was used to it by now, but he still knew when the smell intensified, when it became obvious.

Major General Pilipis just needed something to push him over and accept the Tech Com plan. He'd felt a little something stir inside him when Colonel Binochet had first contacted him, and a little bit of something else when he saw the small team of Tech Com soldiers. Tech Com's reputation was known around the world. They fought the hardest and longest battles right on Skynet's doorstep, throughout North America and the United States, Skynet Central. He just needed a push.

As if by Divine Will he saw children run by his windows, screaming and laughing as they played tag or chase, some game children play, he didn't know, it was too long ago. He was too old to remember. He didn't let himself smile at the sight, the rare sight, of children playing. Somehow they were the only happy ones left in the world, even if they would live longer on this shattered planet than old men like him.

"I know the signs when God wants me to act," he said. He held out his hand and motioned for the UMPC. He took it back and flipped it open again, looking at his camp. This had been the first time in months he'd seen it and he zoomed out. It had grown. The central southern sector had expanded, nearly doubled. He knew the numbers; nearly two thousand refugees had arrived last week, and four thousand three weeks prior. But those were just numbers on paper. He'd never actually _seen_ them.

"If I attack… how can I protect the people here?" He asked quietly, never taking his eyes off the little display screen. He kept flicking the view up and down with the stylus.

"You can't protect them by just waiting. Skynet might attack you. They might not," Baum said sympathetically. He knew exactly what the man was saying.

Skynet might immediately retaliate, it might not. But in recent years it had been doing much worse than mere retaliation. And Baum knew this, he had been the personal victim of Skynet's psychological stunts.

The third major offensive he'd planned, against Skynet forces in Las Vegas had been a resounding military success. But Skynet broadcast that because of the attacks, it would annihilate 50,000 refugees in a dozen settlements it had claimed to be 'graciously sparing in the hope of co-existence.'

But that wasn't close to what they had done to his nephew, John Connor. Skynet transmitted around the world it would kill 10,000 human prisoners each week unless Connor was handed over. So far it had killed exactly one million, one hundred and twenty thousand prisoners. Each week it broadcasted the images around the globe of its executions, to any TV, computer, or any device which could still receive visual communication signals.

Derek had seen his nephew almost break over that, before becoming even more cold and distant. The Tech Com Colonel did not want that guilt on anyone else. Not on General Pilipis, not on anyone.

Skynet knew humanity. It knew how to make humans feel _guilty_. It's most powerful weapon in this war was not a new plasma rifle or a new Terminator series. It was its ability to hurt humans emotionally and psychologically.

CPO Franks believed he could help win the Greek general over. "We can help. We can show you how to array your forces so it is harder to track. If we can drive Skynet from Athens, from this dig site, we can help establish a larger perimeter." He paused to let the general consider that. More land, more places to hide, more points to ambush Skynet. "You're effectively cut off from a large portion of your nation. Each side is too paralyzed to move, for risk of attracting attention. How is that not defeat in all but name?" He spread his hands out and his eyebrows went up slightly as he awaited the general's response.

"If I do this, how do I know I won't be alone in this? Bucharest and most of Romania, Moldova, and Bulgaria are under Skynet control. I attack I could have a division on my doorstep in a month." He'd had false hope before. Half a dozen generals throughout the Balkans had proclaimed they need only fight hard, then harder, then the hardest they had ever fought and they'd win. Each was dead now and half the armies of southern Europe were smashed, their heads strung on pikes as a warning for others.

"You won't be alone, General," Baum sincerely stated. His eyebrows came down and the glossy look which had been in his eyes had vanished when General Pilipis had taken back the UMPC.

There was hope here. Derek felt proud to be a part of this, establishing John Connor, his nephew, as the leader of the worldwide resistance. This was a step to make that happen. "Skynet will hit back, but we can help you by disrupting their communications or satellites and can send more special ops teams. Connor sees this as a world war. We've got Canada and Mexico and half a dozen Latin American nations fighting with us over there already. Australia and New Zealand and Taiwan and the Philippines stand by us in the Pacific. We stand by our allies and they stand by us."

Derek Reese Baum knew the general was close. He pegged him as a bureaucrat, but not everyone was oblivious. They'd been lucky this time. They'd met and established themselves with good people. This was the last person they needed to convince. None of them would let this end so close to the end.

General Pilipis sighed, bringing his hand up to cover his face. He kept his eyes and head tilted towards the ground. He knew he would regret this. "What do you need me to do?"


	4. Chapter 4

==========Mount Parnithia, Athens Prefecture (April 2023)==========

This wasn't what Joanne Soto had anticipated when she had been sent back in time sixteen years ago. She hadn't expected to see those crimson blood-red eyes staring down at her. She was supposed to be the one starring down at them.

To be on her back like this, her left arm somehow pinned behind her back was wrong. This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

In this moment, she experienced an analogous event similar to what humans experienced when faced with certain death. Life 'flashed' in front of her eyes. For a machine with one of the most advanced CPU neural nets in existence there was no question that her life flashed through her eyes. Her decades of accumulated memory, from video to sound to sensor recordings would take much longer than this moment would allow to 'flash' before her optical sensors, or in her neural net, but something beyond her control forced her to relive the most important memories.

But what was strange for her was that there was no folder or file designating one memory any more important than another. In any other situation she would be curious as to why this was happening. For her, now, the flash was a hindrance, a distraction. She was a terminator. She never went down without a fight.

She remembered being awoken, or activated, she didn't mind either word, in a pristine, clean, bright factory in 2025. There was a voice, a strong and commanding voice. But it was also a voice which was soothing and friendly. It had talked to her for weeks. They had discussed every topic imaginable concerning man versus machines.

She remembered meeting Alex and Carter. Their first missions together in the future. Then she remembered stepping into the TDE with Alex and Carter. Soon after they made contact with the Connors, Cameron, and Reese. She could finally appreciate the hilarity of the scene when Sarah had almost exploded when Alex had told her his actual name was John. She had refused to have a machine with the same name as her son in the house, assigning him the name 'Alex.' No one knew exactly why she had chosen that particular name.

These flashbacks suddenly stopped as soon as they began. The warnings flashed in her HUD as she stared down the muzzle of a heavy plasma rifle, the tip still glowed a faint orange from the recent shots the terminator had fired. Her hyperalloy could withstand a few hits, but not from the T-800's heavy plasma rifle at this range and its foot grinding into her, pinning her to the ground. At close range, on full automatic, she would be dead before she could move. She was faster than an 800, but it only had to move its finger mere millimeters.

Her body could be mangled; her limbs tore from her torso, her power cell crushed. But as long as her CPU remained intact she was still alive. Unfortunately, the T-800, its metallic jaw grinding left and right, the ever-present grin boasting of its success, had no intention of leaving that valuable piece of her to survive.

She could see its neck hydraulics contract and expand as it prepared for her death. A low mechanical groan from the machine signaled its final taunt before it would pull the trigger. It should kill her _now_, but somehow she felt it was taking pleasure in this moment.

She heard Alex and Carter pounding on the metallic door, the two scientists cowering in the corner, and the dead human Gray lying on the ground. His skin had been blistered and his blood flash boiled, every hole and opening in his body had exploded as the superheated blood exploded out from inside his body, ripping off his skin, exploding his eyes, and gurgling from every orifice in his body. A faint mist, like a red fog, was still settling onto the blood-stained metallic floor.

In the moments she lay on her back, pinned, looking into the eyes of her destroyer she had many regrets. That thought brought a mental smile. She mused at the thought of a machine with regrets. She wasn't sure if there was a 'Heaven' or 'Hell' for machines, though humans seemed to think all machines went to the latter. Maybe it was possible for a human ally to get into the former? It wasn't important now.

Alex and Carter would never make it through the door in time. This was the end.

* * *

==========Thirty Minutes Earlier=========

High on a concealed outcropping, ten Tech Com soldiers waited patiently under cover as the sweet smell of green and lush Greek Fir and Aleppo Pine drifted through the cool Mediterranean air and bathed the area in a rich aroma of nature's pine and fir.

The sun had risen slowly that morning. That was at least the impression for the majority of the group. Sailors had often identified the color of the rising sun, red, as a warning. The SEALs were no exception to this. Today it was red.

The machines understood, but they could easily cycle their vision so the color of the sun didn't matter to them. Colonel Baum didn't really care if the sun was red, yellow, or purple, as long as it let him kill Skynet soldiers, _metals_.

The Greeks had initially protested this daytime assault, saying it would be suicide on a regimental scale. But Skynet sensors worked just as well in the night or the day. It was pointless to fight at night, when humans could barely see.

Baum and Alex had been forced to slowly explain this to the Hellenic Army remnant; which was typical of armies throughout the world which refused to bring the fight to the enemy. Skynet's attacks were random, but it based its attacks on tactical and strategic information. Enemies lacking extensive night vision equipment, such as the Hellenic Army, would be disadvantaged if they at night.

"Jo, Carter, and I will proceed first," Alex stated quietly as he rearranged the vest draped over his chest. It concealed ceramic plating as an anti-plasma defense. While his hyperalloy could take multiple plasma hits, every little bit of extra protection would help. The technological pollution of the time line, partly his fault as well as Skynet's, could mean anything at this point. Skynet could have sixth generation plasma rifles in reserve. "When we give the signal, you know what to do," he directed towards Baum and CPO Franks and his SEALs. There was little that needed to be said. They'd all run dozens of operations together.

Unfortunately this team had been whittled down from twenty to thirteen. The SEALs had been members of SEAL Team 1, Platoon 3. When Judgment Day hit they were training outside San Diego. Half of Platoon 3 had been killed after the Skynet uprising and had merged with Platoon 5 in 2018.

"It's too bad Montgomery can't be here. He never got to go to Europe," remarked PO2 Henry Vasquez. The Lieutenant Commander had suffered second degree burns on twenty percent of his body in a raid east of San Francisco and was still recuperating in Tech Com HQ in the San Gabriel Mountains.

"Adelman and Mora should already be at their locations," CPO Franks stated. He looked down at his synchronized watch. Sighing quietly he rubbed his armored helmet forwards and backwards on his head, trying to get at a slight itch at the very top of his scalp. "The Greeks should be ready any time now…" he trailed off quietly.

Alex dug out his PDA and began panning through the scene one last time. Tech Com satellites would be in position for another thirty minutes. He nodded to Jo and Carter to take theirs out as well and the three initiated a close range data link with their respective electronic devices. Linking directly to satellites was risky for the machines and the PDAs allowed for an additional layer of encryption and defense should Skynet attempt to attack them electronically.

Wireless links to computers, other machines, or when it existed prior to 2011, the internet, were easy to maintain, took little system resources, and was barely noticeable. However, linking to a highly encrypted, powerful satellite signal was entirely different. It wasn't an entirely pleasant sensation to have the satellite signal begin to decrypt. To a human, it would have been analogous to an excruciating white noise transmitted right into one's brain.

"Sometimes it'd be nice to be able to do that," CPO Franks commented, nodding down to the PDAs. He had noticed the slight ticks and flicks from the synthetic facial muscles of the three machines as they had linked in. Before one of them could suggest the neural augmentation process John Henry had developed, Franks held up his hands and said, "And no, out of the question. I know what one of you will say. You always do," he said jokingly, slapping Carter, the closest one, on the side of the arm.

The three machines had been forced to reduce their active scanners to a mere fifteen meters, and they picked up two blips incoming. The blips didn't move like endoskeletons, but moved more awkwardly and with uneven movements like humans. Mora and Adelman had returned.

"Are the missiles ready?" Derek asked, not bothering to look up at the two. He sat with his back hunched against a large rock, his plasma rifle carbine at his side and his right gloved hand gripping the barrel. It had looked like he was talking to himself, muttering something under his breath. The machines could hear him praying.

Petty Officers Mora and Adelman had nodded the affirmative that they were and Baum checked his watch. The Greeks would be attacking soon. If the Greek attack failed they would need to missiles to take down returning aerial H/Ks. And if the attack succeeded, they'd leave the missile battery on automatic fire as a going away present.

Derek nodded to Franks and they divided the team up into threes. Baum went with Mora and Adelman.

"Good luck," he said to the machines. They nodded back, their faces impassive as they waited for their own signal.

The three would go in on their own because the others would die and slow the machines down if they attacked in tandem with the human soldiers. The SEALs and Baum would provide covering fire and sniper fire while the three machines rushed down the wooded and steep stone cliff at sprinting speeds.

It was risky, a frontal assault. But they had snuck in this deep already and they needed to get in and out.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Mount Parnithia park was filled with small valley, steep cliffs, rock outcroppings, and thick forests. Skynet forces were distributed through, with maybe three dozen guarding the main entrance the Tech Com intelligence units had identified.

Most of the heavy digging equipment had been airlifted back to Bucharest the day previous, reducing the aerial H/K support. The only Ogres were on E75, north of the park, patrolling the old highway for vehicles.

Many of the terminators were thus unavailable to instantly reinforce the dig site. But five T-800s stood guard at the entrance to the underground tunnel, which could very well slope down for a half mile or more. The operation had to be done now, soon, before Skynet fortified the tunnel with blast doors and automated turrets. Of course, it wasn't expecting a Tech Com raid, not in Europe. And the attack on Szvzecin in Poland had drawn some forces from Bucharest, and General Pilipis's attack-

Began right then.

* * *

Major General Ianssis Pilipis felt good. No, that was an understatement, he told himself. He felt great. For the first time in years he was bringing the fight to _them_. He and his subordinates were running back and forth from computer to computer, radio to map to over watch positions, read to coordinate the battle. And he looked up for a moment, to the sky and the heavens, praising God for the UMPC connected to his computers. Without that tiny piece of Tech Com equipment, this would have been impossible.

It had taken days for Pilipis to quietly move his forces into position. Somehow, he wasn't sure how, the Tech Com soldiers had jammed Skynet sensor drones and had taken out aerial UAV scouts. He remembered back to what the stiff Tech Com soldier, the 'kid'… Alex… something, he forgot his name...Planck, he believed, had said. '_We don't use smoke signals'_… Pilipis had wanted to smack the soldier on the back of the head for his wise crack; a trait he had heard was common in the Tech Com ranks. He snorted. He knew the Tech Com guys were arrogant and cocky, but by God they had somehow been able to pull off the impossible. Shaking his head he turned and nodded to his subordinate. It was time.

Within seconds the battle had begun. The beginning of the battle, with the explosions, the magnificent glow of fire, the serenade of hissing mortars and falling artillery, the sounds of battle distracted them all from the present and sent them momentarily to the past. He missed those sounds. Not that Greece had fought a major war, but he had served for three years in Afghanistan under NATO and ISAF. The sounds he missed were the sounds of _his_ artillery smashing the _machines_ to pieces. It had been too, too long.

Quietly and covertly he had moved a regiment, with a little extra surprise, to the outskirts of northern Attica and positioned artillery and small mortar units within range of Mount Parnithia. He'd almost called the attack off when a platoon had been gunned down by marauding T-600s.

But Skynet had not followed up on its own ambush. He snorted at Skynet's arrogance. Skynet had expected nothing from humanity, and General Pilipis had reluctantly admitted to himself the night before that he had fulfilled Skynet's expectations.

Skynet had played him and other human generals into inaction and it had succeeded. He sighed at this thought, furling his eyebrows as his face dropped. He'd been duped, fooled. Not anymore.

Now was time for his act of defiance. He was ready and willing to spoil Skynet's egotistical march through southern Europe and his homeland.

He made a deal with God. If it was his time to die, then so be it. But in exchange he vowed to take out all of Skynet's units in Attica, including the small garrison in Athens.

Ianssis Pilipis slowly raised his binoculars up and felt the cool metal rings contact the edges of his aging eyes as he surveyed the initial assault. The mortars and artillery had gone wide, missing the old highway, E75 and the three Ogres which were visible from his position. He knew there were a few more out there, Ogres. If his assault was going to succeed, they needed to be neutralized. And fast.

He cursed the air, but not his men. They were just as frightened as he was. And just as much out of practice. He brought the binoculars down, balling his fists so tight his short fingernails dug into his skin. He could hear the whine and shrill decent of a second salvo. He trusted his men.

The massive explosive of one of the three Ogres brought a small smirk on his face and a gleaming shine to his tired eyes and then without conscious thought they opened even wider in disbelief as the situation quickly enveloped him. They were here, now. They were _really doing this_. His smirk expanded quickly into a massive grin, his second in command whooping as they scored their first major kill. The command station exploded with life and jubilation as a dozen soldiers began even more earnestly coordinating the battle. He looked over; one of the headquarters' guard was giving a one-fingered salute towards the Skynet Ogre they had just destroyed.

He hadn't seen his men this excited in years. Everything would change. Today was the day.

* * *

PO2 Mora had taken his position minutes before the first bombs and artillery had fallen. He heard the distance _thump thump boom _of artillery fire when he heard the planes overhead.

With precision a trio of old Greek F-16's and a single Mirage 2000 hugged the ground and had streaked towards the mountainous park, releasing thousands of pounds of bombs on the outlying defenses of the Skynet dig site.

Unfortunately for the human fighter planes the aerial H/Ks began their pursuit. The larger aerials were not as fast as the human jet fighters, but two heavy H/Ks quickly released two miniature pursuit variants which began streaking towards the fleeing human craft.

But that was not Mora's primary concern. He followed the three terminators with his scope as they rushed down the cliff face, which was slanted at a suicidal seventy-two degrees. But the three machines bounded down and bounced with a grace and agility impossible for humans, double wielding plasma carbines, with the powerful hydraulics and synthetic muscle in their arms keeping their shots steady and accurate on the T-600s below them.

They sent the signal. The machines had distracted the Skynet terminators, even taking down four T-600s in their initial assault. Now it was time for humans to rein death on their oppressors and become the hunter.

Mora carefully adjusted the view on his optical scope, keying the zoom function on the side of his plasma rifle, a sniper variant. The rifle linked with Adelman's sniper variant, and the red targeting reticule, flashing as the two weapons aligned on the T-600, flashed quickly and halted as solid red.

The plasma was hot, burning, and it burned an amazing blue-white as it was propelled down the barrel and towards the target below.

The worn and battle-scarred T-600, its CPU encases in titanium, steel, and ceramic weaves could not react fast enough as it detected the massive increase in heat centimeters from its armored cranium. It could not evade in time. A machine was fast, but not that fast.

Within a microsecond of detection the twin bolts of burning plasma splashed into the armored skull of the 600. Quickly the outer ceramic burned and boiled away, the superheated material burning plants and sizzling gray-black smoke as it hit the dirt. The ceramic provided a crude first line defense against plasma weaponry. But the 600s had been built before humans had deployed plasma weaponry in such massive numbers. The ceramics were only a stop-gap.

The second salvos from the team of SEAL snipers hit again, a little off, but close enough.

The ceramic was now completely shattered and melted, burnt away and incinerated. The plasma instantly began eating through the titanium and steel armor, the brown-black battle scarred armor turning red and orange as it superheated and silver as it melted and slid down the face of the T-600. In an instant the superheated metal had boiled and burst into the CPU port of the solitary T-600.

It shook violently, flailing its limbs wildly as the shock from CPU disintegration was sent through its body. Its power core and hydraulics had no active control and it fell, shaking without control, similar to a human spasm. And within seconds of this gruesome reaction to death, the machine stopped, its crimson red eyes slowly fading, a low metallic groan escaped its vocalizer as the residue of life was finally exhausted, fleeing the defeated metallic remains of the T-600.

* * *

Alex had raced down the hill, dodging plasma fire, pushing off trees, and skidding down the slope towards his awaiting enemies, distant mechanical cousins. His uplink to the Tech Com satellite was providing him with a perfect map and the location of the dozens of terminators guarding the entrance to the mine shaft and dig site. In a feat of machine strength he jumped and rolled the last fifteen meters, instantly bringing up his plasma carbine and firing dozens of shots into the T-600 which blocked his path.

The blue-purple plasma weaponry cracked, the air became electrified with static, and the heat intensified. Alex could feel the heat on his skin and could see the faint orange glow at the tips of the rifle's muzzles and he killed the demon of death in front of him.

He could see the streaks of heated air the plasma bolts left in their wake as they drove mercilessly towards their targets.

The charge had seemed reckless, but it placed the three machines in perfect positions, and had caught the Skynet terminators completely off guard. They hadn't expected even a human attack, let alone a machine attack.

Skynet's forces were arrayed along E75, expecting an attack, if it occurred, from the north of the national park, rather than from inside, and never down the steep cliff faces. The dense pine trees would have slowed human attackers, and the cleared kill zone was too wide for humans to run across without being gunned down.

Alex Planck scanned for his next target, sending data to the fire teams on the ridge. He saw a T-600's head explode, its body violently convulse on the ground and he heard it emit the strange and haunting death groan. A second and third and fourth did the same in rapid succession.

He and the other two machines quickly passed through the kill zone and took cover, firing as they moved on the terminators which had closed to their position from their patrol routes.

The three had fought against tougher odds than this and with no sniper support. This would be relatively 'easy' compared to other operations. And with the mountains interfering with Skynet communications, and the wireless technology encased within the machine chassis, the human-allied Terminators were successfully jamming terminator-terminator communications.

Lifting up his right carbine he took aim at a duo of 600s coming around the base of a cliff, firing into their chests and exposed hydraulics. They didn't have the hyperalloy combat plating like he and his two friends did. Unfortunately one of the 600s was able to fire his own plasma canon, exploding the outcropping of rocks Planck had been crouching behind, which sent him flying and landing with a hard thud on his back.

Quickly, and without hesitation he lifted his head and torso at an acute angle, regaining the target lock on the remaining T-600 and fired a trio of four round plasma bursts into its chest, neck, and face. The plasma burned away the more sensitive optical sensors, the artificial mechanical eye exploding out with a shattering crack. The plasma bleed through and extreme residual heat burned through the cracked eyes and further damaged the internal sensor relays of the 600s eyes. The seven foot tall metal monster was now effectively blind. But a blind terminator was hardly a disabled or useless terminator. It kept firing on Alex's position, sending up foul smelling and choking geysers of dirt and debris, cratering the ground with holes and black scorches.

The ground around Alex was heating to near dangerous levels. If he didn't move soon, the clothes he was wearing would catch fire, and his synthetic skin would burn beyond his ability to replace.

He quickly decided his next course of action. Squeezing the trigger slowly he released the pressure and saved the charge remaining on his rifle's power cell. The two snipers cover him sent the signal they had the terminator in their sights. The sniper team had his back, and they quickly dispatched the brown-black hulk of death with quick, successive shots to its cranium and power core.

In this regrettable moment of distraction the other T-600 had closed and fired its plasma canon, burning parts of Alex's fatigues and blackening the ceramic armor. The shot had resulted in a glancing hit, and part of the skin on his left forearm and side had blistered and burnt away, revealing minute traces of metal armored endoskeleton.

The T-600 was hit by a combined blast from the over watch sniper team covering him, allowing him to regain his own combat momentum and fire into the chest and head of the T-600, quickly crippling it.

However, its underarm plasma canon kept firing, blasting the ground around Alex as the T-600 died. The shots were wide and missed, but blackened and burnt dirt and the smell of ozone washed over the machine soldier. One stray blast hit a pine tree behind him, flash boiling sap and the moisture within the tree, and causing the tree to explode outward, a torrential downpour of splinters and quietly burning pine needles the result.

In that instant Alex shot back up to his feet, rejoining his comrades.

"We have seven T-600s remaining and the five still guarding the entrance have retreated inside," Carter informed him calmly over their data link. Alex checked the data still beaming in from the overhead satellite and zoomed out.

The battle along E75 was intensifying. Nearly eighty percent of the terminators had diverted to reinforcing the four of six Ogres left firing, but the aerial H/Ks were nowhere to be found. Zooming out again, Alex sensed a momentary and insignificant drop in power core output. The aerials were in the rear of General Pilipis's formation, ravaging the artillery batteries. Greek fighters had fled and four aerials had followed, but the other fighters were still minutes out. Unless General Pilipis had air defense units in reach of the two aerials raking his artillery they would be annihilated.

"Standard formation and attack," Alex said. The two other confirmed. The sniper teams still covered them and took out two more T-600s. Alex smirked; the humans now had more kills than the three terminators.

The three machines advanced quickly, using their speed to jump from cover to cover, laying down fire as they advanced and destroyed the remaining T-600s. Alex believed Skynet should have deployed T-650 or 680 heavy terminator units. Or Skynet could have deployed the faster and more agile T-700. The hulking forms of the T-600 were useful against human soldiers, but not against three machines from the not-so-distant future.

But the worse part, to Alex, was that Skynet didn't deploy heavier units because it never expected human attack. The human forces around the world had not been taking the war to Skynet. And that was truly disappointing.

Alex could hear the sounds of explosions in the distance. They had maybe ten, fifteen minutes before the Terminators at E75 realized that their brethren were cut off from their wireless communication and send back scouting parties to ascertain the situation at the dig site.

But if General Pilipis succeeded with his infantry and armor push, he could cut off Skynet forces from Mount Parnithia and from Athens.

The three quickly advanced on the entrance to the mine. The shaft floor had already been covered in metallic plates, and the sides and ceiling reinforced with steel girders and concrete. Almost in unison they switched vision modes and attempted to scan the facility. The mine shaft curved, and was longer than fifty meters, making anything beyond invisible until the machines moved in.

Slowly and cautiously they advanced.

* * *

General Pilipis reflexively ducked as a Mirage 2000 came roaring and streaking over his secluded and hidden command point. He watched it fly by, the noise deafening out the explosions and bangs from the battle in front of him. It fired a volley of missiles, two striking a large aerial H/K which had been decimating the Greek artillery units.

The aerial careened and tilted in the direction the missile had struck before trying to regain its stability. But its left engine had been shattered from the two missiles and within seconds it had exploded, its fuselage and fuel lines had ruptured and it slowly began a death spiral towards the ground, leaving a trail of acrid black smoke in its wake.

In typical Skynet fashion, in a last act of defiance, the aerial continued to rein plasma fire at anything it could before it crashed. The explosion ignited the jet fuel, sending up a massive orange and red fireball into the sky, quickly followed by thick plumes of the blackest smoke Pilipis had ever seen.

The Mirage, which had appeared in a fashion giving credit to its name, had departed even faster. In retribution for their fallen Skynet comrade the remaining aerial H/Ks had swiveled their turrets and pasted the sky with their sparking, electrified balls of plasma, attempting to bring the mettlesome human craft crashing and burning from the sky.

The major general remarked that the pilot was marvelous, dodging and twisting, with an almost sixth-sense ability to evade the plasma fire.

Unfortunately for the aerials, a trio of MANPAD rockets came streaking towards the center unit, but anti-rocket point defense canons obliterated the offending missiles. And fortunately for the Greek air defense units, the rocket trio was only a diversion. A duo of missiles launched from the opposite side of the aerial H/K, struck it with an animalistic fury and shattered its engines and fuselage and sent it tumbling into the pine forest. A magnificent fireball leapt outwards, incinerating hundreds of trees and quickly ascended hundreds of feet into the sky. A black-as-night cloud of smoke quickly followed the fireball into the beautiful blue sky.

He pulled back up his binoculars and quickly surveyed the battle. A platoon of his elite soldiers had moved methodically up and down the left flank of the machines, laying down suppressing fire on the Ogres and half a dozen T-600s.

A flicker of movement caught his eye. Three soldiers were running up, old Aris IV anti-tank rocket launchers pointing up towards the sky, slung over their right shoulders. They halted behind the scarred and burned remains of old cars and trucks, reduced now by rain and weather and wear to rusted hulks.

If he squinted, he could see the skeletal remains of their occupants.

He watched, at the limit of his view, as the soldiers took aim. Firing all together, their rockets streaked towards an Ogre.

He cursed when one was shot down by anti-rocket plasma fire, but the second somehow made it through, annihilating the left anti-personnel plasma turret on the Ogre's left arm. Orange and red fire leapt down from the arm, engulfing the treads before the plasma cells ruptured, causing a larger blue-purple explosion which ripped the rest of the arm off, disabling the Ogre's remaining left arm weaponry. The third rocket finished the crippled Ogre.

His subordinates came up, asking for permission to engage in the second stage of the operation. General Pilipis nodded his approval. Now the armor would break a hole in the left flank of the machines while helicopter assault troops, ferried in by a dozen helicopters with bellies to the ground, armed with anti-tank rockets would swoop in from the eastern expanse of Attica and cut off the Skynet retreat. And the big surprise; a trio of Apache Longbow attack helicopters, part of the hidden reserve arsenal of the Hellenic Army.

He quickly ducked as a line of stray and weakened plasma blasts from a T-600 hit the sandbags and trees besides him. He sighed his relief at being spared. He had no armor. And even this far from battle, a stray plasma based carried enough malicious, burning heat to rip through a man's chest and explode his heart.

* * *

Alex, Carter, and Jo had descended at a gentle downward angle for nearly two hundred meters. They had detected none of the five T-800s which had been standing guard outside the main entrance, nor had they detected the additional T-800s which would inevitably be in the dig site.

As they had descended they had lost all communications with the sniper teams and satellite uplinks.

Alex and Carter had entered a massive artificial cavern after detecting faint blips, indicating motion. It was completely artificial, covered from floor to ceiling in a gleaming black and red metal and marble finish. The room was large, with a dozen large stone pillars arranged around an even more massive central pillar made of a shining, gleaming black rock.

Casual scans could not identify the exact composition of the central black pillar.

Their HUDs began to static. Alex and Carter both ran a diagnostic as their data links to each other and Jo cut out. That wasn't totally unexpected in combat, and both knew without informing the other, so they remained quiet. But there were no Skynet jamming devices in the cavern.

Each of the pillars had the same writings and symbols facing away and facing the center of the central pillar. An ornate design of blue, black, orange, and red stone formed distinct patterns in each. Most surprisingly, each pillar appeared to have a separate Zodiac symbol.

"There is a power source," Carter pointed out. Alex ran a deeper scan, straining against the static still permeating throughout his HUD. Carter was indeed correct. Somehow there was a faint power signature coursing into the pillars without visible wires.

The two had to step within arm's length in order to scan the pillar properly due to the static. Somehow the faint power signatures were emitting blocking radiation.

And as they had walked into a trap, it had been sprung. With a strong hiss the entrance had snapped shut as a concealed blast door descended from the ceiling before Jo could react and enter the room. It closed with a massive thud and click as the locks sealed the room like a tomb. Alex and John were cut off physically cut off, and with the interference could not communicate to Jo over the wireless.

Six T-800s began firing at them from a semi-circular ambush position.

Plasma fire began eating away at the pillar, the stone bubbling and melting the ancient ruins. Alex quickly sidestepped while firing his plasma weaponry, hitting one T-800 with burst after burst, burning and melting its coltan reinforced endoskeleton.

As he brought his left gun and right guns towards separate targets a stray plasma burst hit his left plasma rifle, shattering it and burning the skin from his hand and vaporizing the forearm section of his fatigue jacket. The strong smell of burning flesh instantly filled the space around Alex as he reacted to the superficial damage.

A second blast hit him in the chest, on the added ceramic plate, but without enough kinetic energy to knock him down. Crouching he fired on the attacker who was closest, sending plasma bolts into the 800s optical sensors. Melting circuitry dripped out of the metal eye sockets, the T-800 still firing where he believe Alex to still be located, except that Alex had rolled and skidded behind a second pillar and was firing on his left-sided attacker.

Blasts of burning plasma struck the pillar above his head, turning the stone instantly red before the heat exploded the stone out, showering him with rocks, one large enough to knock him slightly off balance before his micro-gyros could realign properly. In this instant moment of confusion the T-800 which had fired had closed at phenomenal speeds, tacking the human allied terminator and sending his metallic body crashing into a pillar.

The hyperalloy combat chassis and ancient stone made contact, with the pillar giving way. It shook violently, threatening to crumble and bury the two fighting terminators under dozens of tons of debris and rock.

Alex shot his left foot back into the ancient stone and marble and kicked out, propelling himself towards the onrushing terminator, both now disarmed. He slammed his hyperalloy shoulder into the chest plate of the T-800 with enough momentum that he knocked over the much heavier terminator, himself rolling back on his shoulder to his feet before the terminator could push itself back up.

The Tech Com soldier bounced over quickly and brought his foot down square on the cranium of the T-800, denting it inwards and cratering the skull. His threat assessment software warned him of the other T-800 still focused on him, and he caught it orienting its heavy plasma rifle at him. In an instant it had fired, but Alex had fallen to his metal stomach and driving a finishing elbow into the cranium of the already injured T-800. With a single remaining punch and microsecond structural analysis of the bent and distorted and pounded metal skull, he knew it was impossible for the CPU to have survived.

Unlike T-600s, the T-800 series did not convulse as it 'died.' Alex turned his body to the right, presenting a slimmer target profile to the approaching 800. He rammed his fist into a nearby column and tore a hand sized stone, and forced to improvise he threw it so hard it would have knocked a human head right off the shoulders.

It was sufficient to send the T-800's head popping backwards and giving Alex enough time to throw the body of the now dead T-800, like a rag doll, right at his attacker. He then rushed forward, bent down, and quickly scooped up a heavy plasma rifle one of the destroyer terminators had dropped.

The momentarily stunned T-800, thrown to the ground by the weight of his dead endoskeletal comrade was forced to use his powerful hydraulic legs to shoot the dead endoskeleton at a steep angle, which flew above Alex's head and smashed into the opposing pillar with a monstrous thud, sending crumbling debris and rock to the ground after the terminator.

The force was enough to send cracks tearing through the column up and down from the impact points. Rocks chipped off under the pressure as the column tilted away from the fighting machines. Loud creaks and ear piercing wails of stone being ground under stone and shattering added to the already loud and deafening sounds from the ongoing battle.

Quickly the pillar collapsed, firing dusts and stone shards across the entire chamber, shaking the floor violently as dozens of tons collapsed without hesitation.

Alex was now on top of the T-800, pointing the muzzle of the heavy plasma rifle straight into the right eye socket of the grinning demon as dust rush through the air and washed over him, pushing the loose portions of his fatigues forward. He pulled the trigger, sending plasma bolt after bolt into the eye, melting it, boiling it away, the metal armored cranium melting with such speed Alex had burned a hole straight through to the ground, superheating the ground until it glowed orange-red before he lifted his finger from the trigger.


	5. Chapter 5

Going left had been the correct choice for Jo. She'd killed another T-800 and four more Grays… whom she believed to be security guards. She'd entered a corridor through a second series of blast doors and felt immediately 'out of place.'

What she entered was not of Skynet or ancient Hellenic construction construction. None of the markings on the corridors matched the geometric patterns of early Greek Dark Age constructions and the migratory settlers would never have been able to build something like this.

She had slowly and quietly entered a second corridor off the secondary mine shaft when her HUD began to static over. Attempting to shift vision, nothing changed. She attempted to minimize the HUD, solving the problem until red warning signals flashed and automatically reinitialized her HUD. She mentally sighed as she calmly pressed the butt of her plasma rifle into her shoulder, creating a deeper pocket for support.

Virtually every scanner except the ones which relied on line of sight began to shut down one by one. Motion, heat, 3D imaging, radiation, EM and other sensors began shutting down, leaving only her the visible light spectrum.

She passed nearly a dozen ancillary chambers and quickly surveyed each, relying on her neural net's processing capabilities to determine if anything was out of the ordinary due to her inoperative sensors. Slowly she walked and cleared each one.

Jo could see the footprints of multiple metal endoskeletons in the light dust which had coated the floors of the chambers. On the walls were what appeared to be power conduits and multiple series of strange electrical outlets. Metal mountings on the wall with what were most likely data connection ports indicated these rooms were monitoring rooms or control rooms for something. But by now they had been cleared and stripped clean by Skynet forces.

She could hear a slight hum, a very slight hum. It was mechanical. She considered that it might be a generator, but Skynet fuel cell generators were completely silent. Her hypersensitive hearing began processing the noise and sorting it from the background.

Quickly she followed the sound. She noted the corridors were slightly wider and there were no more rooms, or monitoring stations, coming off of them. She could see Skynet's black-brown colored, industrial-like patch works on some of the bulkheads and girders, the distinctive dark, black-brown colored metal Skynet used in almost all of its construction.

If she had been human her heart would be racing, she'd be sweating, and her breathing would be rapid. Dangerous situations were not the only times she was grateful for not being human. The things she could do… but she cast these thoughts aside and banished them from her active neural net cognitive processes and refocused on the mission at hand.

Connor wanted something here. She'd seen that gleam in his eye when there was something he wanted. She'd seen that look in John from her time line and John from this time line. All of his commanders knew it and either feared or it welcomed it. It meant he would do whatever it took to get what had peaked his interest. This wasn't just some sneak and peak mission. It was sneak/smash and grab and deny whatever-it-was to Skynet.

This wasn't just a mission for Connor. He was the only one with enough authority to stop a second genocide if the humans ever won against Skynet. She and Alex and Carter would spread the word of John Connor, making contact with forces like Colonel Binochet and now with Major General Pilipis. When a free machine faction emerged it would be stronger than in their own time. It would defeat Skynet if they could organize the resistance around a central leader. He needed help, he couldn't do it alone. Machines, pretending to be human, could spread the legend that Tech Com was unbeatable. They had to show coordinating with Tech Com would be in their best interests.

This time they could-

She pulled the trigger on her plasma rifle as more Gray traitors rounded the corner. Their armor would have protected them against all but the heaviest of caliber bullets, but it melted under the intense heat of blue-purple plasma weaponry. Their chests exploded both forward and back from the center mass shot. The fluid in their bodies had been built up to such extreme pressure inside their bodies as the plasma burned through skin and sternum and superheated muscles and bone that superheated blood exploded and burst out from their mouths like geysers and tore apart any surviving mucous membrane with a blood-curling cry of agony and death. The blood fell quickly to the ground like raindrops, with a fair mist coating the walls red.

Jo stepped up, examining the dead. The wounds had been cauterized from the superhot plasma. But the exposed skin around the burn site had blistered and blood pooled underneath. Their eyes had exploded out from the intense pressure and yellow-red cerebral spinal fluid leaked out from their ears.

At this point she couldn't help but wonder if these were the last of the guards, if they had killed all the T-800s, or if there were a few T-800s down there sending these men out to die. It was unlikely. Skynet actually kept its promises to the Grays, and to her knowledge, had never betrayed them. She felt a momentary ping of sorrow for the Grays. Skynet used them, but they used Skynet as well. Skynet gave them power over their fellow man. But they used Skynet for food, safety, and clean and warm clothes. It was a mutually parasitic relationship. No one was hated more than the Grays.

Turning at a right at a J junction, she got her answer about the T-800s. A metal arm swung at her, knocking her back and off her feet and her plasma carbine back down the corridor. She kicked out, knocking the T-800 off its feet. In the machine language it said something but Jo was too busy. She jumped on top and began punching the T-800 in its cranium. The blunt force trauma from her blows was effective until it regained its complete function, placed its skeletal hands on her chest and shoved her back, throwing her into and almost through the metal ceiling of the corridor.

She was about to fall when the jagged edges caught the on the armored vest she was wearing, halting her in mid air, exposed, like an old piñata. She could swear the T-800's mechanical groan was its own special laugh as it dimmed its eyes before lunging forward to grab her.

In her original time line the T-800 had been the primary infantry unit of Skynet. She knew they could be imbalanced with quick and decisive blows, disrupting their micro-gyros. She kicked her left leg out and hit the wall behind her and using her powerful hydraulics pushed up, the T-800 missing her by millimeters. It had put its power into the forward charge, calculating her weight would help stop its forward momentum. Her opposite foot hit the wall, allowing her momentum and a simultaneous push to spin her around, her vest twisting around the sharpened metal edges and tearing. She graciously slipped out of the torn vest, her arms raised above her as she landed on the floor, her knees buckling slightly.

The T-800 had regained its balance and turned, gritting its metal jaw and titanium teeth right then left then right again. It flashed its eyes and groaned as it balled its fists together. The T-800 lowered its head, pushing its chin into its chest, looking up at Jo in an utterly demonic expression of malice and hate. Jo activated the deep blue glow to her eyes, kept her head high and smirked. She taunted the T-800 with a quick snort, daring it to come forward. For what seemed like a lifetime the two stared at each other, almost daring the other to move first. The T-800 wouldn't budge. It's patience was infinite. Jo's little smirk expanded slightly, showing her diamond-titanium teeth. She turned her head, narrowing her left eye in an almost half-wink. She took the dare and charged.

The T-800 feigned a counter charge and sidestepped, believing it could unbalance her like she had done to him. But her model was faster, more agile, and had much more extensive experience and she anticipated the Skynet Terminator's move. She planted her right foot and turned with a speed it would have broken and cracked the knee and hip of a human, twisting them out of any semblance of natural movement and lunged back, hitting the Terminator square in the chest with her shoulder. It outweighed her by nearly four times, but the power and speed knocked the terminator back into the corridor wall.

Sensing her opening before the terminator was out of reach she grabbed its neck servos with her smaller hand and pulled the T-800 down with her. She used the momentum to again position herself so she was on her side, facing a terminator now on its back. Her carbine was within reach now.

In an instant she had jumped up, the terminator about to follow. She stomped her right foot on the terminator's left foot and braced herself and pushed. She slid him five meters down, sparks flying into the air as metal grated against metal with a terrible screech of tearing metal ringing through the corridor. With a machine-like speed she reached down and grabbed her plasma rifle as the T-800 rolled on its side, and used its colossal arm hydraulic system in a push-up movement to throw itself back onto its feet. But she already had her finger on the trigger and squeezed, firing blue-purple plasma shot after shot after bolt after bolt at the terminator as she back stepped and it forward stepped.

The torrents of superheated gases were too much for the T-800. It's chest armor began failing, its servos and hydraulic began pinging as they expanded beyond operable parameters. The T-800 slowed down and the boiling metal burst into its power cell, stealing away its life.

In its death it reached out, trying to grab onto her, trying to terminate her as its chest plate melted, its power core vaporized, and its secondary cell smashed by exploding, boiling metal. And in one last act of defiance it surged one step forward before its red crimson eyes, those evil bloody eyes dimmed forever.

She flipped the terminator, getting a better bead on its head. She reduced the plasma output and began to slowly fire point blank into its armoring cover the cranium. The carbine muzzle glowed the eerie orange-red as plasma superheated the air, boiled the metal, and exploded the CPU inside the vacuum sealed port on the right side of the now-dead Terminator's head.

* * *

Derek was in over watch position along with Mora and Adelman, scanning the dig site and surrounding hills for enemy machines. He'd watched the three machines recklessly (though he did recall they said it was the 'best' plan) charge down a cliff face and engage T-600s head on. Even against his initial objections he would be forced to admit to them the plan had worked. How he would have to listen to Alex say 'I told you so' when they got back.

He and Alex had a terrible habit, or game, he wasn't sure which, of 'I told you so' whenever the other was wrong. It was the natural result of the sixteen year competition between the human commander and the machine commander. Who could one-up the other? Derek could readily admit that machines were stronger, faster... even smarter. But they lacked human intuition. That 'gut feeling.' For each 'I told you so' Alex could throw at him, he could throw one right back. Humans weren't obsolete in this war, yet.

Sure, he could admit to himself, they'd saved his life countless times. Well, not countless, but enough. They'd even chased and killed the person who had destroyed his life, without him even asking, and had spared him the psychological torture of having to face his destroyer. He snorted to no one except himself. He knew the machines were arrogant SOBs but somehow they'd survived this long.

He owed a lot to them. He could readily admit to that thought- he pulled the trigger on his plasma rifle when he saw one of the downed T-600s attempt to get up. He lost his previous thought as he remembered that sometime these terminators played dead. This time he and Mora and Adelman put another dozen plasma bolts into the CPU casing of that 600. He didn't want any surprises.

It hadn't been like that before. Not in his time line. He didn't know what he had changed when he came back. He didn't blame himself for the changes, which were for the better and for the worse. His nephew had sent so many resistance fighters and Skynet so many of its own fighters that the time line was irreparably polluted.

Colonel Baum did hold one honorable distinction in this time war; he was the longest serving resistance fighter on Earth. Sixteen years in his time line and twelve years now. Sixteen in this one if one counted 2007 to 2011 before Judgment Day. Of course, only a handful of men and machines knew his origins.

Derek and Kyle Reese of this time line always seemed to be in a separate theater than him. He'd only once gone to see his brother and only at a distance. He wasn't sure if it hurt too much. Or if it hurt too little and was afraid to admit that fact; that he was too cold now.

He and John had talked once about sending his brother back in time, when the need came. But his brilliant nephew, the only one who seemed to understand time travel in his native time line, wasn't sure if Kyle even needed to be sent back. It had 'already happened.'

He sighed, blinked, and squint his eyes, shaking out the blurry vision which was starting to grab him after peering through scopes for the last twenty minutes. He suppressed a yawn, which surprised him since he slept even less, and much more lightly now than he had when he was younger. He felt stronger and more alert, though sometimes he thought it was cockiness than he had in his original time line. He mentally slapped himself back to reality, reminding himself cockiness was what got soldiers killed. He'd seen it countless times and he had been in Death's grip a dozen times due to his own, only to be rescued. It humbled an old veteran like himself, but at the same time frustrated him.

Derek suppressed the frustration of past memories, but inadvertently dug up another as he kept his eyes scanning the dig site and mountain passes for terminators.

He knew his nephew and Cameron had told the three to look after him. Somehow he was always on a mission on the anniversary of the day his life was destroyed. he thought it was selfish of himself, complaining about _his_ loss so close to Judgment Day. But his nephew had always told him that sometimes you had to be a little selfish in order to survive. His one act of 'slefishness' had ended in complete disaster. Now the diversions, the missions, they were like clockwork at this point. Somehow John always had a mission for him in April over this week. He cursed them all for before blessing them for their kindness. Sometimes he wondered why he still fought.

And as much as it bothered him to admit it, he fought for the only five constants in his life. He kept his eyes wide and alert for any Skynet reinforcements as explosions, scream, and hissing sounds of artillery came raining down on the E75 highway. He spotted a massive fireball which had erupted, hearing the massive explosion seconds later; this distracted him for only a moment from his thoughts. But he just had to laugh and chuckle at the thought that of Derek Reese's five oldest 'friends', the Derek Reese which had jumped back in time sixteen years ago and had hated everything technological from computers to reprogrammed _metal_, four of them were machines.

He finally was able to put a halt to his wandering mind. He spotted another T-600 descending from one of the mountain paths, most likely to check on what was happening at the dig site (its left arm had been destroyed, and sparking wires were visible before the mid-upper arm, and he told Mora and Adelman to hold fire. He took his rifle and fired until his power cell was empty. He felt much, much better.

* * *

Jo quickly ran a system diagnostic check after pulling the double-back stunt with the T-800. As a mission she was designed with additional points of joint articulation, and her leg joints could bend at unnatural angles, but still, she was concerned she may have overdone it this time. Unlike previous models, she did not shut off due to extreme mechanical stress. She had sophisticated safety programming, much like a human had Golgi tendon organs or muscle spindle fibers to prevent muscle tears. Except her Golgi tendons and muscle spindles were small built in senors emitting electrical signals which fed into her CPU neural net which then told her hydraulics and power cell to decrease output.

Satisfied with the diagnostic, she smiled and smacked her lips. She added one more terminator to the growing kill count. Being able to recite kill-counts was a valuable lesson she had learned in 2007 when she wanted to be taken seriously.

She placed the plasma carbine in the crook of her shoulder after checking its power cell. As long as no terminators revealed themselves after she was done here, she should have enough ammunition to finish off any remaining Grays and the few T-800s that most likely remained in here.

As she moved in, the whole structure felt out of place. Zodiac symbols began appearing on the wall, and structural scans, while limited severely due to the interference indicated these were quite old. Yet the black metal still shone like it had been forged and polished only last week. There was no rush, little dust and none of the things typically found in archeological dig sites. Plus her database told her ancient metallurgy was inadequate to forge this metal. And Skynet most certainly did not place it here. No need. Their work was more industrial, more practical. This corridor was almost like a work of art; plus it had the Zodiac. Jo knew Skynet wouldn't put human constellations on a wall. That made no sense.

"Hey, is that you! Metal head!" She heard a man cry out, yell actually, towards her. It wasn't directly towards her because he was behind a ninety degree turn in the corridor. But he more than likely heard the battle between her and the 800. It only made sense to assume the 800 had won.

Though on a second thought, accompanied by a tilt of the head as she thought of the scenario, it made sense to assume the attacker won, since the attacker, her, would have fought through a horde of guardian T-600s and multiple T-800s and nearly a dozen Grays to get down here. The human, if it was human and not an 800 mimicking a voice, was being incredibly irrational in his subconscious hope that somehow a lone 800 had stopped the attackers when a dozen were unable to.

Mentally laughing at this poor Gray's bad luck, she could help herself from feeling sorry to him. If he was just a soldier she would shoot him on the spot. A Gray soldier didn't have more than rudimentary intelligence on Skynet movements.

Yes, she decided, she would shoot him. She told herself she was a terminator, after all. If he surrendered she might use him for information, and then shoot him. Either way the man would end up dead. That would be a fulfilling end to this mission.

Plus hauling a prisoner back to America or to France or Switzerland for EU/NATO forces to interrogate would be an incredible burden. Colonel Baum would likely shoot the Gray if one of the terminators did not.

She turned, holding her rifle up. It was a Gray alright. She walked slowly into the room, a lab. On the far wall she could see computers, server farms, and racks of high capacity hard drives and a large viewport looking into a massive cavern in the mountain. There were the Skynet black-brown colored metal girders and metal support braces visible behind the glass. Curious, she tilted her head while keeping her eyes on the Gray. This mission was intriguing.

"Come any closer and I'll kill them both," the Gray said as he stood behind two scared, frightened men. "I swear to God that whatever you are, I will fucking kill these two fucks before you can do anything." He kept one eye on her and the rest of his head hidden behind the man on the Gray's left. If she fired she would most likely blind the man he was hiding behind, if not burn off half his face.

The two men were well-fed, but not overweight, one was 6'2", the other 5'10". She couldn't determine with specificity their ethnicity, but they appeared to be Caucasian. Other than this rudimentary and incomplete data, she had no idea who these two men were and why they were important. They appeared well-fed, not bony and frail like many humans, and their skin was full and healthy. Their faces registered no match with Tech Com visual files.

She caught a quick glimpse of the man's weapon. A plasma carbine.

"Look out!" One of the prisoners shouted.

She thought it was a trick until she heard the door lock behind her and metallic beats of a terminator running towards her. She'd heard the faint cries of Alex and Carter and she knew they'd seen her, and she heard them run up and smash into the blast door, denting it with a magnificently loud and reverberating thud. Within seconds loud bangs began to ring through the lab. They were coming for her.

Jo turned with an amazing speed but the 800 was on her and rammed her to the ground. She tried getting up, but the T-800 grabbed and dropped a heavy server farm on her before leaping over it and pummeling her in the head. The T-800 grabbed her arm as she attempted to punch up it and pinned it behind her. He crashed a second set of equipment onto her leg, keeping her from moving with her limbs now stuck.

The Terminator shot up violently, keeping its foot on her free arm and standing so she couldn't kick.

* * *

"She can take an 800," Alex said quickly as he and Carter had slung their rifles and pounded on the metal door. It had a thick layering of advanced ceramic armor, making plasma weaponry all but useless. _Another_ technology Skynet should not have possessed for another twenty months.

In unison the two wound up and cocked their fists and smashed their armored hands into the door. Jo could take an 800, but from where they had been, the T-800 had been behind her, taking her by surprise. They had been one second too late it firing their plasma rifles, the blast door closing in the nick of time. For the 800.

They settled into a strange, rhythmic, calm pounding of the door. Their strikes were hard enough to dent doors which made early 21st Century bank vault doors look like confetti paper, yet they both remained calm and struck the door in unison again and again and again. The skin on their knuckles gradually peeled away from the blunt force trauma each destructive punch had on the blast door. Bang after bang and still they were not making appreciable progress. They would do this until they destroyed it or their hands were shattered or it opened.

* * *

Jo looked up and into the dark, ominous barrel of the plasma rifle. At this range she would be dead. Her cranium would melt, the hyperalloy would destabilize, the armor around her CPU and transmission lines would be destroyed, and she would be dead.

She didn't want to die. She'd wanted to live. The whole notion of dying, as 'everyone dies for John Connor' was not something she found appealing. Dying was ineffective, inefficient, illogical, and irrational. She could achieve more for her friends alive. Terminators, as fate would have it, had a very short life span. Hers was well into two decades, old, very old, for a terminator unit. In her original timeline Skynet terminators were lucky to hit one year in the field in operation. She didn't include destroyed bodies, no. It was ridiculous to call a terminator 'dead' if the body was destroyed and CPU intact. Most Skynet terminator CPUs survived a few months.

So when the T-800 didn't immediately fire, she cocked her head and looked at it. The 800s crimson red eyes were still shining with a fire only blood could quench. Its titanium teeth were grinding side-to-side and its head tilted at a slight ten degree angle to the right. For some reason, her eyes began to shine blue. She didn't turn up the illumination. It just happened. A quick diagnostic revealed there was 'insufficient data' to form a conclusion. Was she pleading for her life? She didn't know. She would never actively plead.

She knew that Skynet could not be in contact with this T-800 unit. Her wireless links were completely blocked. This Terminator would be running autonomously. She tilted her head back, trying to look passed its plasma rifle. It should have fired by now. If this was the first-

The Gray began yelling. One of the prisoners had somehow managed to back elbow the Gray in the face. His plasma carbine began firing at the ceiling, boiling the metal plating which then dripped down and burned the Gray. He screamed in agony as the white hot metal disintegrated and vaporized his skin and burnt through his muscle and bone. A putrid, disgusting scent of burnt flesh filled the chamber.

The second prisoner was then on top of the Gray within a second. The T-800 was dividing its attention now between the Gray-prisoner fight and the machine under its foot. It pressed down harder to keep her pinned, its combat algorithms indicating that this would be an ideal time for his catch to attempt to free herself. Still, the 800 didn't fire as it should have.

Jo didn't quite understand why it didn't.

It groaned in its mechanical language. Random sounds, random thoughts, Jo wasn't exactly sure what they were. Terminators never 'groaned' in their time line.

She heard the Gray cursing and felt hot plasma on her body. Somehow the prisoners had wrestled the gun from the Gray, who was now clutching his face, crying, yelling, screaming, and had been forced to trow his arms up in protection as one of the prisoners began beating him with his fists. The other picked up the plasma rifle and had fired, his aim was off, obviously, and had burned off half the skin on Jo's left leg, melting her combat boots on her skin before it blistered and boiled, superheating the hyperalloy until its glowed red-orange.

Luckily the Gray's poor shooting abilities worked to Jo's advantage. The 800 was distracted and released part of the pressure pinning Jo's arm. She jerked her shoulder as the T-800 raised its plasma rifle to fire on the prisoner with the carbine. This unbalanced it slightly, forcing a reflexive trigger pull which shot blue-purple superheated plasma into a bank of computers on the opposite wall. They sparked and exploded, sending a shower of light streaking across half the chamber.

The now free prisoner ducked and Jo grabbed up at the distracted T-800, yanking at the exposed metallic 'bones' of the T-800's arm to divert its fire away from the prisoners.

The one with the carbine fired again, blasting randomly at the T-800, not grouping his shots or attempting to adequately control the weapon. Jo knew the man was gripped in fear. He wasn't a soldier. He was a scientist, she realized. Jo kept the T-800 locked in place, as her iron machine grip never let up, the T-800 could not realign its plasma rifle to kill the human.

It let swiveled quickly, this whole fight still only seconds old, and punched down at Jo, its bare metallic knuckles sliding down the right side of her face. He yanked at the 800's arm harder, trying to pull it free of its socket. The scientist with the carbine continued firing. She could feel the heat beginning to rush through the T-800 as its endoskeleton began glowing and bubbling in multiple location. Jo could feel it growing weaker and weaker. Now was her chance.

She directed all available power to her arm servos and threw the T-800 crashing into the server farm, its head smashing into and shatter the large view port glass. The scientist kept firing and firing.

Quickly Jo used her free hand and swiveled, letting her pinned arm out. She pushed the debris off her legs and jumped to her feet. In one fluid, crisp motion she disarmed the scientist and shoved him back towards his friend. He landed on top of the other scientist, still beating the Gray to a bloody mess with a soft thud. Both collapsed on the gruesome, beaten husk of a man that had been the Gray.

She back stepped to the control for the door and hit them. She was pissed. Unfortunately she could not hit the control with all her strength, or they would be destroyed and short circuit, locking her in. With a hiss and groan the door began to open. She reached down and dug her hands into the torn and burnt skin on her leg and ripped it off, tossing it casually in a corner like one would throw dirty clothes into a basket.

As the door opened wider she knew Alex and Carter would have back tracked by now and set up down the corridor with rifles raised, waiting for whatever had survived to come out.

The two saw her.

"Thank God you're alright," Alex said, trotting up quickly. He kept his plasma rifle in his right hand and gave her a warm and friendly tap on the back as he moved past her to secure the humans.

Carter came up and smiled, nodding to her. "We thought you were-" He looked down and saw the exposed metal on her leg below the knee, the exposed knuckles, and the massive tears in her face where the T-800 had punched her.

"Tis but a scratch," she replied, straight face and deadpan. The dry machine humor and reference to the first movie they'd seen in 2007 got a slight chuckle from the other two despite the seriousness and gravity of the situation.

Carter walked quickly to the T-800, which was now resembling a molten slag of metal. It's cranium was still intact. With no other danger he removed its CPU for intelligence analysis.

The two scientists had by now stood up and surveyed the damage around them. Both just stood there, the one who had beaten the Gray until the Gray's face had broken and been mangled and deformed from the blow, beyond the capability to support life, stood there with his hands half way between apathetically hanging at his side and up in a surrender position. The one with the carbine stood there, mouth open and almost on the floor, staring at Jo then at Carter then at Alex and finally at her.

Alex lowered his plasma carbine. "Who are you two?" He motioned with his chin for the one of the left to answer first. He tilted his head waiting for a response and narrowed his eyes for effect.

"Sam… Samuel Wells," the one on Alex's left stammered. His fists were bloody. He turned slowly to his colleague. "This is Peter Carwin."

The three machines each looked at each other. Alex took a step forward. "You are… we thought you two were dead." Wells and Carwin both looked at each other, eyes wide. They were surprised anyone would be looking for them. Carwin held up his hands, taking two nervous steps back until his back bumped against a large computer console. He shook nervously when he realized he had no more space to retreat. "I mean, we looked for you. We couldn't find you."

"Wait… what… why?" Wells asked, stuttering his words. "And… you're machines…" he stammered, that fact finally hitting him as it stared him in the face. He breathed in slowly, closing his eyes and let the breath escape through barely opened lips. The breath was long and uneven and the man was shaking. He looked down at Jo's foot, her face, he looked towards the other's torn skin. "I... I had no idea... what...?" he couldn't find any other words in his confusion. He kept his head shaking side to side, trying to take this all in. In the agony of not understanding he cup his face in his hands and groaned.

Carwin looked at them all, the fear rushing out of his eyes.

"Yes we're machines and-"

"You're time travelers," Carwin said, elated. The fear had been replaced with a look resembling envy and awe.

Alex wasn't exactly sure how he had come to that conclusion, but didn't dispute the fact. They'd know soon enough anyway.

Carwin excitedly hit Wells on the arm, pushing him back slightly. "I told you!" He regained his composure, the fear leaving him almost instantly. "We were captured by some machines in 2008 and then captured by Skynet and when I woke up I was in some hospital or clinic, something. They changed my face. And Sam's face, too." He looked over at his friend and nodded, almost as if he had to confirm the memory. "They've kept me and Wells here," he hit him again on the arm; Wells was too late in flicking his hand away, "on the move and at other places. They told us about time travel and forced us to work for them." He rolled up the sleeve on his collared shirt. "I tried to sabotage our work… but you can see what they do." There were long scars running down his forearm. "There's a lot more..." he added quietly. "That bastard whose head is splattered on the wall," he jabbed his thumb to the side, "was an SOB." He sighed, dropping his shoulders. "This fucking sucks," he stated simply as he looked around, leaning forward and cautiously eying the molten slag of terminator remnants.

Alex looked at the two. They were perhaps the one irreplaceable part of the resistance. Minus the leadership of course. Finding them here was... amazing, incredible. The admission to being time travelers came earlier than expected. "Yes, we're time travelers. From the early 2030s… another time line," Alex told them, Carwin nodded. Wells wasted paying attention at the moment. "We're machines, as you figured out. We're allies of the human resistance. So, you're safe." This would be an amazing resource for the resistance, for Tech Com to have the two men responsible for time travel working for them. He had lowered his rifle now and motioned with his head for the two to follow him to the viewport.

"We tried to find you, in 2008," Alex explained.

"Wh-what?" Carwin asked. "You?"

"To stop Skynet. But we can explain later. What's going on down there?" The machine asked.

He looked over, summoning both Jo and Carter to look as well. They gave it a half-ways glance, keeping their eyes on the door.

"Is that a TDE?" Carter asked, his CPU neural net modulating his voice to convey surprise.

"A what?" Wells asked, genuinely confused about the acronym.

Of course if the two hadn't built the technology yet they wouldn't have a name for it.

"A time machine," Alex informed them, keeping it simple and keeping his eyes looking down below. Automated machines were scanning and taking samples of the equipment and even more pillars.

"What? No, it's not a time machine, well, not really, well... uh... no... no...." Carwin said, unable to make up his mind. "But look, look, come here," he grabbed Alex on the arm, but released his grip immediately when the machine shot him a hard glare. "sorry…" the scientist apologized as he stepped back and typed in commands on his computer console. "look," he pointed at the screen. "This is just some chamber. There are remnants of a ship buried even deeper in the mountain."

"You're not saying it's…?" Alex trailed off. Though it wasn't a large leap to make with what was currently happening in the world with sapient super computers, killer robots, time travel… why not?

"What? No!" Wells shot back from looking down into he cavern, using his arms on the ledge to push himself back quickly. He searched the broken room, snapping his fingers when he saw his prize. He flipped open the tablet and began showing Alex and called the other two machines over. "Anyway… how long have you been with…?"

"We're Tech Com," Alex said. Wells gave him a blank look. "John Connor…"

"The terrorist?" Wells said, shooting his head back with a look of disgust on his face. Alex gave him a 'what-in-the-hell-are-you-talking-about' look while his artificial temporal and masseter muscles visibly contracted under his fake skin. Sam Wells held up his hands in his own defense. "Listen, I know Skynet is evil and all… but last I heard you all were attacking the US government and-"

Alex stepped forward, his eyes illuminating with the deep blue color. Carwin also saw this and stepped back, frightened. "Let me tell you," he began, jamming his finger into Wells' chest, "Connor never attacked the US government. We attacked Skynet installation and never human targets. Skynet put human soldiers and workers in their factories, for 'protection,'… as human shields."

"Listen… I didn't know... I was just-"

The machine sighed and looked to the side, past the scientist, "Just tell me what schematics you were going to show me with, Doctor Wells."

"Oh, right, right," he brought it back up and showed Alex the pictures and translations. "This ship is about four and a half thousand years old... if our dating of the corridors and pillars you probably found upt he shaft are accurate," he jerked his head in the direction of the battered blast door. "Those corridors were built as a means to get… this whole mountain, it's _artificial_. Whoever landed here put a mountain on top their ship… don't ask me why... the writing, it's similar to ancient Greek… it predates the language! We've seen references to the Olympians, the ancient gods… whoever these people were… uh… what's your name?"

"Alex," he said, the hint of annoyance was clear in his voice.

"Ah, right." He snapped back to his excited explanation. "So whoever buried their ship built these corridors and all that. We're not sure why. But there were old, ancient monitoring station. Computers, view screens, data bases. And that thing down there… it's like a uh… you ever seen Star Trek?" He asked hurriedly. Alex nodded. "Yeah, so… it's like a transporter." He brought the tablet to his chest and clutched it with both arms wrapped around, while he colleague continued to work at the station. Alex noticed he grabbed spare high capacity memory cards and inserted them into a few data slots. "So our time travel machine, when we build it in the future needs a 'transporter' capability. Because if you say… go back in time six months… which is actually impossible because there is a minimum and the power requirement- oh, right… sorry, I digressed." He snapped himself back to the main point. "Anyway if you went back in time and the earth wasn't in the right spot you'd be dead because you'd be floating in space. So you need exact coordinates and 'transporter' ability." He stopped and looked out at the wall, his eyes glassing over as he thought. "Though there is also the theory that the 'transporter' capability is inate and automatically included in time calculations... I don't know! We haven't built the damn thing yet, but we will!"

Alex nodded. They needed to go. "We need this information and-"

"Got it and done!" Carwin stated triumphantly, holding up a quartet of full data cards. "I figured you all wanted to get the fuck out of here. I also hacked the self-destruct… oh by-the-way. Thirty minutes."

* * *

Colonel Baum steadied himself, shooting his arms out to the side as he and the Tech Com team, plus two extras, made their way back to their fall back positions. He felt his knees pop in his old bones as the ground shook violently as a subterranean ten kiloton nuke detonated. The violent ground quake increased, knocking him down, but was caught by Carter, with the two scientists they had rescued being caught by Jo and Alex.

"Thanks," he said quietly.

The small group continued moving quickly through the state park, portions of which were now on fire from the Greek attack on highway E75. They'd attacked successfully, and the entire team looked up as a trio of Mirage 2000's streaked towards Athens, releasing air to ground missiles. They could all hear the tell-tale signs of battle from the city. If General Pilipis's rear guard defenses held in northern Greece, Skynet relief and reserve aerial H/Ks and aerial transports would be receiving an alarming dose of missile fire.

They didn't know the casualties of the offensive. But if the Greeks were advancing on Athens, retaking Attica s Pilipis had sworn, that meant they'd obliterated nearly a battalion of Terminators. If they sustained less than 25% casualties fighting the machines, it would be amazing. Chalk one up to the good guys, a successful day and another successful mission accomplished.

The machines could hear the distant hums and diesel engines of Leopard tanks, M113s, and BMPs on the highway. Alex turned, only seeing a speck of the attack convoy using maximum magnification. He could make out the destroyed silouette of a massive Ogre ground H/K, still spewing black smoke and burnign orange flames intot he sky.

"We're going to get you two back to John Connor," Colonel Baum told the two scientists, finally breaking the uneasy silence and tension which had built up. "Facial reconstruction, huh?" He asked rhetorically.

Alex nodded. "Never would have thought of it," he admitted, shrugging his shoulders. "Sly," he pointed out.

Derek huffed. "Yeah, yeah it was. Who knows what they gave Skynet. Connor will need to debrief them… he'll want to do it personally." He shook his head. "Wish I was there in it."

"You've got a few years left, old man," Alex said, a grin on his face opposite the side Derek was walking on. The machine took a quick glance at the ground and brought his rifle up slight and quickly increased his steps, moving forward quickly before Colonel Baum could respond.

The SEALs were in a standard escort positions and Jo and Carter were on the extreme flanks while Alex was center, taking point. Jo had been forced to bandage up her entire leg in gauze and large trauma patches. Her face and knuckles were covered in band aids and patches as well. Where Alex and Carter had received damage, their metal had been covered in band aids, gauze, and epidermal glue to temporarily suture the skin, if possible.

The Greeks had rescue helicopters two klicks west, and probably a squad of special operations soldiers spread in the forest for recon. They didn't need to know the machines were machines. Not yet.

Now they would have to get to southern France and then hop down to Africa and cross to Morocco and catch a German diesel sub back to the States. Derek sighed as he went over the return trip route. Two life times ago he could have been to Europe back to California and back to Europe in a few days. Now it took weeks. He was getting too old for this.

A half dozen loud and rumbling explosions could be heard in the distance, the uneven terrain blocking much of the sound. Unfortunately for Derek, the terrain did not block the sound which began behind him.

"Listen, this is fantastic," Wells stated, breaking Derek's train of thought. "How long have you been fighting with them?" He whispered to Derek. He referred to the machines. "I can't believe Connor has machines fighting for him," he stumbled as he tried to keep up with Derek's increase in speed over the uneven terrain while trying to soak him for information. "This is really exciting. What series are they? They aren't T-800s, they're too small." Alex turned around, giving the scientist a slight hint he could hear them. Wells quickly backtracked, "But they must be an advanced series," he added in, increasing the volume in his voice and pushing his chest and head forward slightly he finished with, "and definitely more advanced than the 800s."

Derek rolled his eyes. He wanted to tell him about the liquid metals. He had no idea when Skynet would begin fielding those, if it did. They're the ones, according to Weaver who 'supposedly' led the anti-Skynet faction. The Terminators Skynet sent back had all been endoskeletons for that very reason.

"Yes. Sure. That's great," Derek responded, dryly. He wasn't in much of a mood to talk. He scanned the trees, though he knew in the back of his mind the three machines could alert them to any danger before the humans ever noticed. But it was still comforting to at least pretend.

And even after completely wiping out an entire Skynet facility and getting the Greeks unified under Connor, it just wasn't a great time for him. He didn't want to listen to anyone talk right now. Thankfully Alex had gotten the hint and the SEALs were as quiet as they always were.

His eyelids felt heavy, forcing him to blink as his vision again blurred. For what seemed the hundredth time that day alone he cursed his 'old' age. John would undoubtedly be promoting him in a few years, assign him some cozy common post at HQ, and get him out of the field. He laughed at that though. 'General Baum.' Before time jumping he never expected to ever be 'Colonel' of anything. Honestly he never expected to live much longer after taking command of a spec ops squad in his original time line. But a command position at HQ and not going in the field? He grunted, not if he could help it he swore. At least, not for a few years. He knew he still had enough fight for the front lines.

Wells got the hint from Derek's curt reply and silence to stop talking. But he hadn't had anyone except Carwin to speak to for years. They were best friends and colleagues, but it got boring talking to the same person day in and day out. "Yeah… so… anyway… too bad the ship is destroyed. Whoever built it, whoever or whatever the 'Thirteenth Tribe' really was, what they had… it was amazing." He sighed, rising to his tip toes as he walked, looking for the other two machines. He really wanted to talk to them. "Anyway… we still have years of data to sort through. This is going to be big." He grew quiet and mumbled to himself. "It's going to change the world."

* * *

A/N: So… I hope everyone liked that. As for the ending, I guess it wasn't big and action packed (doesn't always need to be, ;)). But this was written to explain to those who have read The Mission and By Courage and Blood how Tech Com found out about the Twelve Colonies and Kobol. (I know it didn't answer how they knew of the Cylons.)

As I said in the A/N above Chapter 1 I plan on doing a lot more of these short stories featuring the three terminators. There is a lot of material out there. Plus I like the characters of Col. Binochet, Grazsi, and Philipis. The next ones dealing with the three terminators will go in actual chronological order more or less (though I might have some stand alone episodes explaining the origins of three terminators... we will see!). They'll follow a broad plot but have more 'episodic'/short story plots to them. Mainly I want to focus on how Tech Com evolved and began uniting humanity. I think that can best be explained with multipel short stories about the feats, triumphs, and set back of Tech Com.

The three terminators will be coming from the early 2030s and a different time line than Cameron and Derek, so they will have a unique perspective on the war. It'll focus on the development of the friendships between the three machines, John, Cameron, Derek, and Sarah and how they try and aid in John's training as well as his relationship with Cameron, his mother, and Derek. The temporal aspect of the war with Skynet will be fairly intense. And it will be a war. As above, Skynet sent terminators to kidnap two scientists responsible for time travel.

I am also taking the approach that the three machines made their own decision to fight Skynet and that the machines are completely sapient (ie they are just like humans, except are made of metal instead of muscle and bone or one could say humans are just like machines, except made of muscle and bone instead of metal). That will also influence their interactions with the Connors and Reese when they jump into the past.

I should have the next story by next month. I promised the folks at Spacebattles I'd finish up with By Courage and Blood. And again I have to thank Damar from SB because the thread he made was the kick start to writing this. I will probably have a bit more in my profile later this week explaining more of this.


End file.
